Social cognitive theory(STC), used in psychology,
education, and communication, focuses on what and how people learn from one
another through observation, imitation, and modeling. Figure1 shows the relationship between person, behavior
and environment. According to SCT, person, behavior and environment, they are
reciprocal causation. In this blog, I want to talk more about this reciprocal
causation in online social networks.
Figure 1
Firstly, person and environment: portions
of an individual’s knowledge acquisition can be directly related to observing
others within the context of social interactions, experiences, and outside
media influences. For example, we can learn knowledge from QA SNS website (E.g.
figure2); we can learn some innovative idea from http://www.36kr.com/ and so on. On the other hand, through peoples
interaction, sharing experience, ideas and media, social networks environment
and resources become richer. But not all information or resource is appropriate
and beneficial for people. How to make
the best use of social networks resources and how to supervise and hit the bad
resources is another important topic for us to think over, especially for
children and teenagers.
Figure2
Secondly, person and behavior: in the lesson, we have
talked three concept of “self”, the individual self ——based on personal traits that
differentiate the self from all others; the relational self——based on connections and role relationships with significance
others; the collective self——based on group membership
that differentiates “us” from “them”. In the social networks, people would like
to present themselves, create a particular impression, build the connections
with friends or anyone they like. In the facebook, you can share your latest
information, feelings, and pictures and so on, which shows your personal
difference from others and create your favorable impression. So, you will have
fans or followers. On the other hand, because of the friendship, you like to
scan and make some response your friends’ latest information in social network.
Then, comparing our behaviors and opinions with those of others is helpful to
establish the correct or socially approved way of thinking and behaving. For example,
you see a lot of wonderful travelling pictures shared by your friends in his
homepage, which will also activate you to go travelling. But, deindividuation is another aspect of
what social networks bring to us. It means that anonymity enables engagement in
behavior people would normally refrain from performing. So some negative
behavior such as swindle, flame war and hostile blog comments would damage the
quality of human interactions. As so far, how to deal with such problems is
also another topic.
Finally, environment and behavior: maybe as mentioned
above, I have involved some interrelationship between both. Here, I want to
talk something about imitation and modeling. Modeling teaches new behaviors,
influences the frequency of previously learned behaviors, even may encourage
previously forbidden behaviors. The social networks, for example, social media
and online games, directly and efficiently stimulate people’s sense and
influence people’s behavior, especially for teenagers who lack self-control. So,
how to guide teenagers to make best use of and enjoy social network is also
another important topic.
In short, we analyze the social cognitive theory in
online social networks and hope to improve social network more and more, in
order to benefit our life.
