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Human Agency in Social Cognitive Theory
Albert Bandura Stanford University
ABSTRACT: The present article examines the nature and
function of human agency within the conceptual model of
triadic reciprocal causation. In analyzing the operation
of human agency in this interactional causal structure,
social cognitive theory accords a central role to cognitive,
vicarious, self-reflective, and self-regulatory processes. The
issues addressed concern the psychological mechanisms
through which personal agency is exercised, the hierar-
chical structure of self-regulatory systems, eschewal of the
dichotomous construal of self as agent and self as object,
and the properties of a nondualistic but nonreductional
conception of human agency. The relation of agent cau-
sality to the fundamental issues of freedom and deter-
minism is also analyzed.
The recent years have witnessed a resurgence of interest
in the self-referent phenomena. One can point to several
reasons why self processes have come to pervade many
domains of psychology. Self-generated activities lie at the
very heart of causal processes. They not only contribute
to the meaning and valence of most external influences,
but they also function as important proximal determi-
nants of motivation and action. The capacity to exercise
control over one's own thought processes, motivation,
and action is a distinctively human characteristic. Because
judgments and actions are partly self-determined, people
can effect change in themselves and their situations
through their own efforts. In this article, I will examine
the mechanisms of human agency through which such
changes are realized.
The Nature and Locus of Human Agency
The manner in which human agency operates has been
conceptualized in at least three different ways--as either
autonomous agency, mechanical agency, or emergent in-
teractive agency. The notion that humans serve as entirely
independent agents of their own actions has few, if any,
serious advocates. However, environmental determinists
sometimes invoke the view of autonomous agency in ar-
guments designed to repudiate any role of self-influence
in causal processes.
A second approach to the self system is to treat it
in terms of mechanical agency. It is an internal instru-
mentality through which external influences operate
mechanistically on action, but it does not itself have any
motivative, self-reflective, self-reactive, creative, or self-
directive properties. In this view, internal events are
mainly products of external ones devoid of any causal
efficacy. Because the agency resides in environmental
forces, the self system is merely a repository and conduit
for them. In this conception of agency, self-referent pro-
cesses are epiphenominal by-products of conditioned re-
sponses that do not enter into the determination of action.
For the material eliminativist, self-influences do not exist.
People are not intentional cognizers with a capacity to
influence their own motivation and action; rather, they
are neurophysiological computational machines. Such
views fail to explain the demonstrable explanatory and
predictive power of self-referent factors that supposedly
are devoid of causal efficacy or do not even exist.
Social cognitive theory subscribes to a model of
emergent interactive agency (Bandura, 1986). Persons are
neither autonomous agents nor simply mechanical con-
veyers of animating environmental influences. Rather,
they make causal contribution to their own motivation
and action within a system of triadic reciprocal causation.
In this model of reciprocal causation, action, cognitive,
affective, and other personal factors, and environmental
events all operate as interacting determinants. Any ac-
count of the determinants of human action must, there-
fore, include self-generated influences as a contributing
factor. Empirical tests of the model of triadic reciprocal
causation are presented elsewhere and will not be re-
viewed here (Wood & Bandura, in press). The focus of
this article is on the mechanisms through which personal
agency operates within the interactional causal structure.
Exercise of Agency Through
Self-Belief of Efficacy
Among the mechanisms of personal agency, none is more
central or pervasive than people's beliefs about their ca-
pabilities to exercise control over events that affect their
lives. Self-efficacy beliefs function as an important set of
proximal determinants of human motivation, affect, and
action. They operate on action through motivational,
cognitive, and affective intervening processes. Some of
these processes, such as affective arousal and thinking
patterns, are of considerable interest in their own right
and not just as intervening influencers of action.
Cognitive Processes
Self-efficacy beliefs affect thought patterns that may be
self-aiding or self-hindering. These cognitive effects take
various forms. Much human behavior is regulated by
forethought embodying cognized goals, and personal goal
setting is influenced by self-appraisal of capabilities. The
stronger their perceived self-efficacy, the higher the goals
people set for themselves and the firmer their commitment
September 1989 • American Psychologist
Copyright 1989 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0003-066X/89/$00.75
Vol. 44, No. 9, 1175-1184
1175
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