Compare And Contrast Erikson And Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory

I will compare and contrast Erik Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory and Albert Bandura’s Social Cognitive Theory. Erikson is a psychoanalytic theorist who believes that our unconscious mind and early experiences in life shape our development. Erikson postulates that we develop in 8 stages that he calls psychosocial stages. Bandura, on the other hand, holds that we develop based on social cognitive stages that are affected by environmental influences.
Let’s start with Erik Erikson’s Psychosocial Theory. Erikson was influenced by Freud who theorized that a person develops in psychosexual stages most influenced in the first 5 years of life. Erikson deviated from Freud in that he thought that we are influenced by our social interactions and our desire

Bandura does not put forth stages or time limits on development. He believes that observational learning (imitation, modeling) is key to understanding our development. A young child may observe his parent kindly talking to someone or violently yelling at someone and this will shape how the child conducts his own life. Bandura’s model of learning and development includes 3 elements: behavior, the person/cognition, and the environment. Bandura believes that these three work reciprocally, interactively, not one-way. They can be visualized as a triangle with free movement between the 3 sides. As our textbook says, an individual’s confidence that he or she can control his or her success is an example of a person factor: strategies are an example of a cognitive factor. Self-efficacy is an important part of Bandura’s theory. Self-efficacy, according to Bandura, is believing that you can accomplish a certain task or succeed in a certain situation. Within self-efficacy, a person may avoid learning a certain task because they do not feel they can accomplish it. Bandura postulates that we learn by observing others. As an interesting fact about Bandura, I am fascinated to find that he, being such a major psychological theorist, quite accidentally fell into the field of psychology because of the difficulty in scheduling rides with fellow classmates. Ferrari,

The stages help me to solidify in my mind what might be going on in a person’s life at a given time. His stages fit with what I imagine each age group is grappling with psychologically at each stage. The two theories are alike in that they attempt to explain human behavior, but they approach it from 2 different schools of thinking. The two theories are like in that they both have a social context to them. I believe that both are valid, and both can help to explain why we do what we do. Erikson’s theory has definite stages that need to be positively resolved and Bandura simply says that we are what is around us basically. We act according to the framework of our lives. We see things through the filter of our everyday lives. I feel that Erikson’s stages explain more about what we need to achieve in life to be fulfilled during certain ages of our lives. This seems like a more detailed approach and it feels good to me to see each stage. Of course, everybody does not go through these stages sequentially, but it is a good idea of what to look for. Bandura explains development in a more holistic way encompassing all ages and situations without giving us detailed information of what may be happening at any given time. Erikson breaks it down into manageable time frames and assigns tasks to them. I believe that inside