Background

Theoretical Foundation: Social Cognitive Theory

A person’s behavior is shaped by both their thoughts and their social environment, and in turn, their behavior also affects their thoughts and environment. This idea is the core of Social Cognitive Theory (SCT). SCT explains how personal informatics tools can facilitate social interactions and shows that two factors are critical for supporting health behavior:

  • Self-efficacy: belief in one’s ability to perform the behavior.
  • Outcome expectations: belief that good things will happen as a result of performing the behavior

Self-efficacy and outcome expectations are strengthened by both personal experiences (e.g., past successes) and social modeling (e.g., observing others perform the behavior, ideally a successful one). Research shows that strong self-efficacy and positive outcome expectations are strongly linked to healthier behaviors across areas like exercise, diet, and disease management.

Thus, to promote healthy behavior, personal informatics tools should not only focus on personal goal-setting and self-monitoring but also help users learn from others (social modeling) and receive meaningful social support.

Related Readings on SCT

  • A. Bandura. 1998. Health promotion from the perspective of social cognitive theory. Psychology and Health 13, 4 (1998), 623–649. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/08870449808407422
  • A. Bandura. 1977. Self-efficacy: Toward a unifying theory of behavioral change. Psychological Review 84, 2 (1977), 191–215. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.84.2.191
  • A. Bandura. 1999. Social cognitive theory: An agentic perspective. Asian Journal of Social Psychology 2, (1999), 21–41. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-839X.00024
  • A. Bandura. 2001. Social cognitive theory of mass communication. Media Psychology 3, 3 (2001), 265–299. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1207/S1532785XMEP0303_03
  • A. Bandura. 1991. Social cognitive theory of self-regulation. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 50, (1991), 248–287. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/0749-5978(91)90022-L
  • A. Bandura. 1986. Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory. Prentice Hall. DOI: http: //dx.doi.org/10.1037/13273-005P.

Research that builds this framework

This framework was built upon our research below:

  • H. Saksono, C. Castaneda-sceppa, J. Hoffman, M. S. El-Nasr, V. Morris, and A. G. Parker. 2018. Family health promotion in low-SES neighborhoods: A two-month study of wearable activity tracking. In Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’18). 1–13. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3173574.3173883
  • H. Saksono, C. Castaneda-Sceppa, J. Hoffman, V. Morris, M. S. El-Nasr, and A. G. Parker. 2020. Storywell: Designing for family fitness app motivation by using social rewards and reflection. In Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Proceedings (CHI ’20). 1–30. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3313831.3376686
  • H. Saksono, C. Castaneda-Sceppa, J. Hoffman, M. Seif El-Nasr, V. Morris, and A. G. Parker. 2019. Social reflections on fitness tracking data: A study with families in low-SES neighborhoods. In Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems Proceedings (CHI ’19). 14. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3290605.3300543
  • H. Saksono, C. Castaneda-Sceppa, J. A. Hoffman, V. Morris, M. S. El-Nasr, and A. G. Parker. 2021. StoryMap: Using social modeling and self-modeling to support physical activity among families of low-SES backgrounds. In Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’21). 14 pages. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764. 3445087
  • H. Saksono and A. G. Parker. 2017. Reflective informatics through family storytelling: Self-discovering physical activity predictors. In Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI ’17). 5232–5244. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3025453.3025651
  • H. Saksono, A. Ranade, G. Kamarthi, C. Castaneda-Sceppa, J. A. Hoffman, C. Wirth, and A. G. Parker. 2015. Spaceship launch: Designing a collaborative exergame for families. In Proceedings of the 18th ACM Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work & Social Computing (CSCW ’15). 1776–1787. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/2675133.2675159