A Social Cognitive View of Self-Regulated Learning About Health

Clark, N., & Zimmerman, B. (2014). A Social Cognitive View of Self-Regulated Learning About Health. Health Education & Behavior, 41(5), 485-491. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1090198114547512

This article presents a social cognitive view of self-regulation that involves three classes of influence on self-regulating behavior: personal, behavioral, and environmental. This triadic model assumes that people self-regulate their health through the use of self-care strategies, setting reasonable health goals, and monitoring feedback concerning the effectiveness of strategies in meeting their goals.

Self-Regulated Learning

Behaviour has been thought to be influenced by three main domains:

• Personal factors, including cognitive and affective factors

• Behavioural factors, such as one's actions and reactions to situations and issues

• Environmental factors, including social and physical circumstances

Self-regulation is the process by which an individual attempts to control these three (triadic) factors to reach a goal. Early research by Bandura indicated that three classes of covert cognitive consequences sustained self-control: intrinsic sensory consequences, anticipatory consequences, and evaluative consequences. For example, a piano student may be motivated to practice by the melodic feedback of the music (sensory consequence), the hope for a professional career (an anticipatory consequence), and/or self-praise or criticism (evaluative consequences.) Evaluative consequences have been thought to be the most effective, as they do not depend on outside influences.

Bandura worked further in proposing a four-step model for the development of self-regulation:

• Desired behaviours could be modeled by agents such as parents or teachers.

• An explicit set of performance requirements could be set and linked to a system of incentives.

• As the model withdraws support, children could be taught self-regulatory functions: standard setting, evaluation and self-reinforcement.

• Finally, attention could be paid to the child’s reference group so that the newly achieved level of self-regulation would be supported by the response and actions of family and friends

Bandura further emphasised the importance of self-efficacy, a person’s self-reaction to the prospect of performing a behavior, in self-regulation. Studies indicate that motivation to reach one’s goal is sustained by continuing self-perceptions of efficacy.

To develop self-regulation, it is important to look at social models who display self-observation, judgmental processes, and self-reactions. After that, one should try to master these behaviours. Once acquired, self-regulatory processes will not be continued unless they produce perceived benefits to the user, such as improved health, or control over aversive events such as illness or disability.

According to Bandura, self-regulation consists of three sub-processes: self-observation, self-judgment, and self-reactions. Zimmerman (1990) posits that perceptions of self-efficacy serve as a sort of thermostat that regulates the proposed self-regulation loop. For example, a smoker’s use of a self-monitoring strategy (counting urges to smoke that are resisted) will provide feedback about success in reducing cigarette consumption. The continued use of this strategy will depend on its efficacy.

Environmental Influences on Self-Regulation

Environmental influences include physical contexts and social sources that affect self-regulation. For example, if a person who is trying to quit smoking finds himself in a room with cigarette smoke, he might have an easier time abstaining if he leaves the room or eliminates the smoke.

The social dimension of the environment also influences self- regulated learning. Self-regulated people specifically expose themselves to models they think will help them function better. For example, smokers may choose to spend more time with their non-smoking friends or go to bars or cafés that do not allow smoking, rather than those that do.

Personal Influences on Self-Regulation

An important determinant of behavior is the amount and type of prior knowledge an individual has. One type of knowledge is the general or declarative information one possesses about the disease at hand. For example, a smoker who knows and believes in the connection between smoking and lung cancer is more likely to try to self-regulate than a smoker who doesn't. Another type of knowledge is what one knows about the processes and procedures of self-regulation. A smoker may know, for example, that avoiding taking work breaks with associates who smoke can assist in crubing the urge to smoke.

Self-efficacy beliefs are strong determinants of learning and has been shown to be a primary indication of motivation to attempt and persist at a behavior. For example, the willingness of smokers to travel by airplane may be influenced by how confident they are, that they will be able to refrain from smoking during the flight.

Personal attachment and motivators for long-term commitment are important in self-regulation. A smoker’s goal may, for example, be to quit by Valentine’s Day to increase his acceptance by a non-smoking loved one.

Decisional metacognitive processes, higher-level cognitions that enable one to integrate general knowledge and situational information to plan and exert control over behavior, are also important in self-regulation. Planning requires deciding when to use a strategy and how to adopt it to a particular context; for example, someone who wants to quit smoking could decide to do a different activity when they feel the craving for a cigarette.

Emotions are also a very important personal influence on learning. In learning new behavior, the most salient affect is anxiety, which often impedes behaviour or physical functioning. For example, a smoker will be influenced by the anxiety he or she feels when confronted with peer pressure to smoke.

Behavioural Influences on Self-Regulation

A self-learner constantly tries to implement and optimise three sub-processes: self-observation, self-judgment, and self-reaction:

• Self-observation is the act of examining one's own behaviours. Recording, the actual noting or keeping track of what is observed in written or symbolic form, has been identified as an effective self-observation strategy.

• Self-judgement involves comparing one's behaviour to criteria and using this information to assess a situation. For example, a smoker may look at his or her cigarette consumption on any given day and compare it to the day before.

• Self-reaction can be behavioral, personal and/or environmental. They are responses to self-observations and self-judgment about one’s own behavior and the impact of the behavior on one’s immediate environment. An example is to give oneself rewards or punishments according to their self-judgements.

Enhancing Self-Regulation

Self-regulation can be enhanced in a number of ways. One way is to help individuals derive strategies that make the three sub-processes, discussed above, easier. One example is to implements a punishment/reward system. Back to our smoker, implementing a system where he or she has to pay €1 into a piggy bank every time he or she smokes may deter this behaviour. Another method is to enable individuals to develop problem-solving strategies and provide them with appropriate information. This will improve self-efficacy by helping these individuals be more independent and autonomous. Much of health education practice today relies on providing individuals with relevant facts and information, verbally persuading them to behave differently, and assisting with aspects of problem solving.