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The present article presents an integrative theoretical framework to explain and to predict psychological changes achieved by different modes of treatment. This theory states that psychological procedures, whatever their form, alter the level and strength of self-efficacy. It is hypothesized that expectations of personal efficacy determine whether coping behavior will be initiated, how much effort will be expended, and how long it will be sustained in the face of obstacles and aversive experiences. Persistence in activities that are subjectively threatening but in fact relatively safe produces, through experiences of mastery, further enhancement of self-efficacy and corresponding reductions in defensive behavior. In the proposed model, expectations of personal efficacy are derived from four principal sources of information: performance accomplishments, vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, and physiological states. The more dependable the experiential sources, the greater are the changes in perceived selfefficacy. A number of factors are identified as influencing the cognitive processing of efficacy information arising from enactive, vicarious, exhortative, and emotive sources. The differential power of diverse therapeutic procedures is analyzed in terms of the postulated cognitive mechanism of operation. Findings are reported from microanalyses of enactive, vicarious, and emotive modes of treatment that support the hypothesized relationship between perceived self-efficacy and behavioral changes. Possible directions for further research are discussed.Current developments in the field of behavioral change reflect two major divergent trends. The difference is especially evident in the treatment of dysfunctional inhibitions and defensive behavior. On the one hand, the mechanisms by which human behavior is acquired and regulated are increasingly formulated in terms of cognitive processes. On the other hand, it is performance-based procedures that are proving to be most powerful for effecting psychological changes. As a consequence, successful performance is replacing symbolically based experiences as the principle vehicle of change.The present article presents the view that changes achieved by different methods derive from a common cognitive mechanism. The

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This article addresses the centrality of the self-efficacy mechanism in human agency. Self-percepts of efficacy influence thought patterns, actions, and emotional arousal. In causal tests the higher the level of induced self-efficacy, the higher the performance accomplishments and the lower the emotional arousal. Different lines of research are reviewed, showing that the self-efficacy mechanism may have wide explanatory power. Perceived self-efficacy helps to account for such diverse phenomena as changes in coping behavior produced by different modes of influence, level of physiological stress reactions, self-regulation of refractory behavior, resignation and despondency to failure experiences, self-debilitating effects of proxy control and illusory inefficaciousness, achievement strivings, growth of intrinsic interest, and career pursuits. The influential role of perceived collective efficacy in social change is analyzed, as are the social conditions conducive to development of collective inefficacy.

This article examines health promotion and disease prevention from the perspective of social cognitive theory. This theory posits a multifaceted causal structure in which self-efficacy beliefs operate together with goals, outcome expectations, and perceived environmental impediments and facilitators in the regulation of human motivation, behavior, and well-being. Belief in one's efficacy to exercise control is a common pathway through which psychosocial influences affect health functioning. This core belief affects each of the basic processes of personal change--whether people even consider changing their health habits, whether they mobilize the motivation and perseverance needed to succeed should they do so, their ability to recover from setbacks and relapses, and how well they maintain the habit changes they have achieved. Human health is a social matter, not just an individual one. A comprehensive approach to health promotion also requires changing the practices of social systems that have widespread effects on human health.

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 hierarchical 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 causality to the fundamental issues of freedom and determinism is also analyzed.

This article presents the basic tenets of social cognitive theory. It is founded on a causal model of triadic reciprocal causation in which personal factors in the form of cognitive, affective and biological events, behavioral patterns, and environmental events all operate as interacting determinants that influence one another bidirectionally. Within this theory, human agency is embedded in a self theory encompassing self-organizing, proactive, self-reflective and selfregulative mechanisms. Human agency can be exercised through direct personal agency; through proxy agency relying on the efforts of intermediaries; and by collective agency operating through shared beliefs of efficacy, pooled understandings, group aspirations and incentive systems, and collective action. Personal agency operates within a broad network of sociostructural influences. In these agentic transactions, people are producers as well as products of social systems. Growing transnational imbeddedness and interdependence of societies are creating new social realities in which global forces increasingly interact with national ones to shape the nature of cultural life.In its brief history, psychology has undergone wrenching paradigm shifts. In these transformations, the theorists and their followers think, argue and act agentically, but their theories about how other people function grant them little, if any, agentic capabilities. It is ironic that a science of human functioning should strip people of the very capabilities that make them unique in their power to shape their environment and their own destiny.The behaviorists gave us the input-output model linked by an obscure black box. In this view, human behavior is conditioned and regulated by environmental stimuli. This line of theorizing was eventually put out of vogue by the advent of the computer, which filled the black box with a lot of self-regulatory capabilities created by inventive thinkers. One brand of behaviorism survived with an even more stringent orthodoxy in the form of the operant model of human behavior. Operant conditioners not only stripped human beings of any agentic capabilities, but imposed strict methodological prohibitions that even natural scientists reject.Scientific advances can be achieved by two types of theories: those that simply seek to identify correlations between observable events without regard to linking mechanisms; and those that specify the mechanisms governing the relations between observable events (Bandura, 1996). Operant analysts declared that the only legitimate scientific approach is one confined to linking observables. In this extreme methodological prescription, they are