f social learning. In this regard, it can be noted that prior to Bandura's introduction of social learning theory, classical and operant conditioning approaches envisioned learning in almost mechanical terms and viewed the learner as exercising little or no control over the learning process.
However, noting that psychology had been hampered by these mechanistic models, Bandura (1977) asserted that people were not simple reactors to the environment but that they selected, organized and transformed stimuli that impinged on them. Indeed, Bandura said that through self-generated inducements and consequences, people exercised influence over their own behavior. This view of learning was termed "social learning theory," and this notion of a sort of two-way causality was termed "reciprocal determinism."
It should not be thought here that Bandura's notion of the causality inherent in human beings in their interactions with the environment (reciprocal determinism) was terribly far removed from the more mechanistic views of operant or classical models. It is true that in social learning theory, causal processes were conceptualized as involving a continuous reciprocal interaction between behavioral, cognitive, and environmental influences. However, Bandura's notion of the self consisted of a "self system" comprised of cognitive structures and subfunctions for perceiving, evaluating, and regulating behavior, and not really a psychic agent that controls action (see: Bandura, 1978).
One of the essential or key arguments of Bandura's social learning theory---(the argument that was perhaps most responsible for introducing this new perspective of human learning into psychological models)---was that neither the operant nor classical models could account for novel behavior (the sudden appearance of behavior never before displayed). In a now classic experiment, Bandura and McDonald (1963) showed conclusively that the behavior of a model w...