Stmaryspsyweb.files.wordpress.com



Social Learning Theory

Albert Bandura claimed that the direct application of consequences, central to operant conditioning was not essential for learning to take place. Bandura said that learning could occur by observing others or ‘models’ in the environment.

Social learning theory moves away from ‘radical behaviourism’ (which states that only directly observable behaviour should be measured, not thoughts or feelings etc) and takes into account the importance of the cognitive (thought) processes involved in learning.

Bandura’s theory of observational learning

Bandura said that for effective modelling of behaviour to occur the following were essential:

Social learning theorists state that learning takes place through what is known as ‘vicarious reinforcement’ (this is where learning is not a result of direct reinforcement or experience, but rather an individual’s observation of another person’s experience). *for an example of this in action see page 10 in your textbooks.

Types of Model

Social learning theorists state that there are two types of model:

Live models – those who are physically present in our environment e.g. teacher / mother / pop star

Symbolic models – those who are present in films, books and cartoons

Symbolic modelling may be considered to have a greater impact in cultures where media is widely available. It is important to note that not all behaviours we observe can be directly reproduced e.g. watching David Beckham take a free kick and not being able to re-produce this would be due to the observer not having the motor ability to replicate the behaviour.

Research in support of the Social Learning Theory

Social learning theory has mostly employed the laboratory experiment to investigate observational learning. A distinguishing feature of the approach is that much of the research has been on people rather than animals such as rats and pigeons. Also a lot of research focussed on aggression in people, especially how children learn to be aggressive.

Supporting Research: Bandura et al (1961)

Bandura et al (1961) conducted an experiment with young children to demonstrate observational or imitative learning. His work has been applied to many areas of psychology, including gender development.

Bandura showed 3-6 year old boys and girls a video in which children of a similar age were shown to behave aggressively towards a ‘Bobo’ doll. At the end of the video there were 3 different endings:

1. The adult in the film commented positively on the behaviour

2. The adult commented negatively on the behaviour

3. The adult made no comment at all

After the video the children were then placed in a room with a Bobo doll and their behaviour towards the doll was observed.

Bandura found that boys tended to show greater levels of aggression towards the doll compared to girls even though they had all seen the same behaviour.

The girls appeared to be more influenced by the negative comments made by the adult in the video.

Bandura concluded that children learn by observing models in their environment and, in conjunction with other mediating cognitive factors (these are the mental processes which occur in-between a stimulus and response that influence our behaviour) they imitate their behaviour.

Evaluation of Social Learning Theory

|Strengths |Weaknesses |

|Social learning theory, unlike behaviourism, takes into account the |Social learning theory does not fully explain individual differences that is, to say what |

|cognitive processes that are involved in learning. |might be perceived to be reinforcement for one person, may not be for another |

|Social learning theory has been applied to many areas of psychology and |The laboratory experiments, using Bobo dolls seem highly artificial and it is therefore |

|has provided effective explanations of behaviour, for example, |difficult to generalise the findings to people’s everyday lives. |

|acquisition of gender roles | |

|Social learning theorists use both experimental and non-experimental |While much focus has been placed on aggression, social learning theory does not take into |

|methods of research. E.g. Bandura used both the experimental and |account sufficiently the role of biology and genetics in aggression |

|observational method when investigating gender differences in aggression.| |

| |Social learning theory does not account for all behaviour. For example, if we learn by |

| |observing others, how is it that a person becomes a criminal when he or she has not associated|

| |with criminals and / or observed criminal behaviour? |

-----------------------

KEY TERMS

Vicarious Reinforcement Model Retention Motivation

Mediating cognitive factors Attention Motor reproduction

1. Attention - the individual notices someone in their environment

2. Retention – the individual remembers what they observed

3. Motor reproduction – the individual replicates the behaviour shown by the model

4. Motivation – the individual seeks to demonstrate the behaviour that they observed

What were the mediating cognitive factors in Bandura’s experiment?

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download