Moving from discussing Skinner's behaviorism to Bandura's social cognitive theory, I could finally see the link between various theories. In social cognitive theory, human beings' behaviors are not merely the consequences from external stimulations like animals. Individuals' cognitive processes play a significant role in making decisions when they encounter different external situations. In this sense, it means that people's behaviors are influenced both by external stimulations and internal personal factors, such as cognition. This makes much more senses to me compared with behaviorism which seems to ignore distinct human characteristics. But I still could not understand how cognition function in dealing with different situations for different peoples. For me, I always very hesitate to make a decision in dealing with vital issues related to me or with significant persons in my life. I feel like it's kind of struggling between different concepts in my mind. Based on my previous experiences, I would say that different thinking process would generate different emotions which would truly influence my final decisions and reactions. But the thing I couldn't figure out is that how to control our own thinkings rather than other peoples' thinkings or behaviors.
Another topic I'm interested in is about Amanda and Ryan's posts that mentioned the relationship between interests and self-efficacy. I feel like when I have interests in something, I tend to have higher self-efficacy but that do not mean I could do well at first. For example, when I started to learn baking and cooking, I failed for so many times. But that doesn't influence my confidence to do that again. So I'm thinking that what does success mean to a person and the relationship between success and self-fulfillment in different contexts and how do we make judgment on our performances based on individual perceptions. When I searched social cognitive theory online, I've noticed that there are many categories and dimensions about human agency. It might be helpful to understand more details about ourselves.
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