Cognitive theories emphasize the creative process and person: process
Cognitive theories emphasize the creative process and person: process, in showing the role of cognitive mechanisms as a basis for creative thought; and person, in considering individual differences in such mechanisms. Some cognitive theories focus on universal capacities, like attention or memory; others emphasize individual differences, like those indexed by divergent thinking tasks; some focus on conscious operations; others, on preconscious, implicit, or unintentional processes. This perspective argues that more creative individuals tend to have flatter hierarchies of associations than less creative individuals; in other words, more creative people have many more relatively strong associates for a given concept, rather than only a few. Two key points are cognitive processes are the focus of study and knowledge is organized.
Social cognitive theory is In social cognitive theory (SCT; Bandura, 1982), behavior is held to be determined by four factors: goals, outcome expectancies, self-efficacy, and socio-structural variables. Goals are plans to act and can be conceived of as intentions to perform the behavior (see Luszczynska and Schwarzer, 2005). One key point is based on the concept of reciprocal determinism, Social Cognitive Theory is the dynamic interplay among personal factors, the environment, and behavior (2). The unique feature of the Social Cognitive Theory is the emphasis on social influence and its emphasis on external and internal social reinforcement.
The difference between the two is SCT is broad in the conceptualization of humans shaping environments versus the cognitive theory is limited in tackling the learning process from the social perspective. A similarity of both theories is that they both highlight the importance of observation as a way of learning.
References
Bandura A. (2001). Social cognitive theory: an agentic perspective. Annual review of psychology, 52, 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.52.1.1
Beck, A. T. (n.d.). A 60-Year Evolution of Cognitive Theory and Therapy – Aaron T. Beck, 2019. SAGE Journals. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1745691618804187.