Reciprocal Determinism

Reciprocal determinism is a theory set forth by the psychologist Albert Bandura holding that a person's behavior both influences and is influenced by that person's own personal factors and by the surrounding social environment. Bandura accepted that an individual's behavior can be conditioned through the use of consequences, while also holding that a person's behavior, along with personal factors such as cognitive skills or attitudes, can in turn act back on and change the environment. He illustrated the idea with a classroom example: a child who dislikes school acts out in class, which leads teachers and administrators to dislike having the child around, and when the child senses this and admits disliking school and being disliked by peers, the child acts out further, prompting the adults to impose a more restrictive environment, each behavioral and environmental factor continuing to reshape the others over time. In this account, behavior is not simply produced by the individual acting alone or by the environment acting alone, but by an ongoing, reciprocal interlinking of behavioral, personal and environmental factors, a view Bandura supported by showing reciprocal associations between people and their environments across repeated studies.