What does Bandura mean by self-regulation? Find an example of it in the case and describe it. Be sure to mention each of the stages of self-regulation involved in the example; that is, what happens during the self-monitoring, self-evaluation, and self-reaction stages?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Bandura believes that people can manipulate their own environments to produce certain consequences and subsequently these consequences allow them to regulate their own behavior. This is self-regulation. The steps in self-regulation include self-observation, self-judgment, and self-reaction. To illustrate, note that when Ruth went to the dentist, she monitored her behavior and acted as a sighted person. She observed that the dentist didn’t know she was blind, was pleased about that (self-evaluation), and continued to act in that way (self-reaction). Ruth observed her own behavior, judged whether she behaved in ways similar enough to seeing people, and responded to her judgment of her own behavior by feeling satisfied with it. Ruth’s striving to act as much like a seeing person as possible and sometimes fooling people into thinking that she could actually see, resulted in Ruth facing less discrimination and having more pleasant interactions with people.