Theory of Reciprocal Determinism

This lesson provides a definition of the psychological theory or reciprocal determinism, developed by Albert Bandura, and provides examples of how this theory works in our social world.

Behavior

Do you find yourself acting differently depending on who you are with? Do you even notice that you act differently depending on your environment? Do you change your behavior when, say, your teacher or your boss is in the room? The psychologist Albert Bandura also took notice of this and set out to figure out why. Bandura, who was born in 1925, came up with a noted theory to explain human behavior, known as reciprocal determinism. Bandura's work comes out of a tradition in psychology known as social-cognitive theory, which takes an agentic approach, or one that focuses on people and their choices.

Theory of Reciprocal Determinism

Do you act the way you do because of your personality or because of your environment? According to Bandura? It's likely both.
Ever heard of Pandora's box, from ancient Greek mythology? Well, Bandura has his own box, in the form of an experiment that came to be known as 'Bandura's Box.' In this experiment, Bandura found that school children who witnessed aggressive play were much more likely to act that way in turn. This set off a light-bulb in Bandura's mind: does the environment play an important role in shaping our behavior?
Bandura's theory argues that three things are responsible for the way we act: the individual, the environment and the actual behavior. Think of this as a 3-piece puzzle we can put together.
The individual piece of the puzzle involves things like your personality, beliefs and unique characteristics. It also includes things like, whether you been rewarded for a certain behavior in a certain situation in the past. If so, you're likely to repeat that scenario.
The environment includes your physical surroundings and stimuli, such as other people or objects in the environment, that influence your behavior. The environment can influence the frequency of a behavior or how likely we are to keep doing something.
The behavior piece of the puzzle consists of the act you are doing (or things you are saying) that may or may not be reinforced, depending on where you are and who you are with.
So, Albert Bandura believes that these three factors are interrelated, and our personality is determined by the interrelationship among them. That's where the term 'reciprocal determination' comes from. Our personality is determined by the way these categories interact, or reciprocate to one another. For example, we might choose our environment (such as where we live or work), and that environment determines much about how we act. But, it was our individual characteristics (such as our goals or beliefs) that led us to choose this environment in the first place.

Examples

Let's say it's your first day of college, and your first class is in a giant lecture hall. Normally, you're shy and quiet and prefer to sit in the back of the room to avoid any unwanted attention. This has a lot to do with your qualities as an individual. However, when you get into the room, you see someone from your dorm who waves you over to an empty seat next to her, right in the front of the lecture hall. You take the seat next to your friend from the dorm. This is because the environment provides a stimuli - your friend in the front - and this has changed your behavior.
We can also think of instances where this might have more negative consequences. For example, if a person cuts in line in a shopping center, this might cause another person to react very aggressively towards the person who cut in line, who in turn might respond to the stimuli - in this case, the aggressive person - and act aggressively himself.

Lesson Summary

Why do we act the way we do? This might seem like a simple question, but the psychologist Albert Bandura spent quite a bit of time trying to figure it out. He came up with a theory that suggests the individual, the environment and the response to a behavior all work together to shape the way we act. This is called reciprocal determinism. For example, when you enter a dinner party and everyone is talking quietly, you're probably not going to yell to your friends. Instead, the environment will guide your decision to talk quietly with everyone else. An important take-away here is that the environment and the individual influence one another. So, rather than thinking that the environment wholly determines our behavior, we should think about how it's one piece of what makes us act the way we do.