What is the Retention component in Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory?

• A. Encoding
• B. Store information/remember
• C. Motivation
• D. Attention

Answer: (B)

In Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory, the retention component is about holding onto what you observed so you can imitate it later. After you notice a behavior (attention), retention asks you to form a memory trace of that behavior—essentially storing and encoding the modeled action so you can retrieve it when you reproduce it. This often involves creating mental representations, using imagery or verbal cues, and mentally rehearsing the action to keep it accessible over time.

So the best answer reflects storing information and remembering the observed behavior for later use. Attention is about noticing; reproduction is actually performing the behavior; motivation concerns the drive to imitate. Encoding is a general memory term, but retention in this framework specifically refers to maintaining the remembered model in memory for future imitation.