Behavior Modification

Bandura’s goal in developing his social-cognitive theory was to modify or change those learned behaviors that society considers undesirable or abnormal.

Fears and Phobias
Bandura applied modeling techniques to eliminate fears and other intense emotional reactions. He used a technique called guided participation which involves watching a live model and then participating with the model. The participants eventually come in contact with what they may fear or avoid. In covert modeling, research participants are instructed to imagine a model coping with feared or threatening situation; they do not actually see a model. This type of modeling has been used for snake phobias and social inhibitions. Phobias or fears restrict a person’s life where they may have a rapid heartbeat, shortness of breath, and vomiting when confronted with objects, animals or situations they fear. To relieve these fears expands a person’s environment and increases self-efficacy. Modeling techniques can also be used with groups, saving time and money in treating people with the same problem. Modeling techniques can be helpful with phobias, obsessive compulsive disorders, and sexual dysfunctions, and the positive effects have been reported to last years.

Anxiety
According to Bandura many behaviors can be modified through the modeling approach and consider two instances: fear of medical treatment and test anxiety.

Fear of medical treatment
Fear of medical treatment can be helped with the modeling approach. Children were studied for anxiety with the use of direct observation, responses on self-report inventories, and physiological measures. Those children who viewed modeling tapes before hospitalization had fewer problems that the control group.

Test anxiety
For some college students, test anxiety is so serious that their examination performance does not accurately reflect their knowledge of the material being tested. A model can talk about coping mechanisms to participants and they will significantly perform better.

Ethical Issues in Behavior Modification
Some educators, politicians, and even some psychologists have suggested that behavior modification exploits people, manipulating and controlling them against their will. However, Bandura believed that behavior modification does not occur without the client’s awareness. Bandura emphasized that the client-therapist relationship is a contract between two consenting individuals, not a relationship between a sinister master-controller and a spineless puppet. Many behavior modification techniques have derived from Bandura’s work. They have become increasingly popular alternatives to psychoanalysis and other therapeutic approaches.