Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) Flashcards
Social Cognitive Theory - Bandura 1961
Social cognitive learning theory suggests that behaviour is learned from the environment the processes of modelling and reinforcement. the basic idea of the theory is that we do not need to experience everything personally in order to learn. we can learn by watching other people.
Modelling: learning through the observation of other people, which may lead to imitation if the behaviour is to be imitated leads to desirable consequences. In other words, I watch to see if the behaviour done by the actor is reinforced or punished. Rather than having to do the behaviour myself and see what happens, Bandura argues that through cognition, I receive vicarious reinforcement.
Bandura recognized that there are certain conditions that are necessary for social learning to take place:
Attention: In order to learn, observers must attend to the modelled behaviour.
Retention: In order to reproduce an observed behaviour, observers must be able to remember features of the behaviour.
Motivation: In order to reproduce an observed behaviour, observers must want to reproduce it and expect a certain outcome from the behaviour.
Potential: In order to reproduce an observed behaviour, observers must physically and/or mentally be able to carry out the behaviour.
Study 1 (SCT): Bashing Bobo by Bandura (1961)
Aim: In this study, Bandura set out to demonstrate that if children are passive witnesses to aggressive displays by an adult, they will imitate this aggressive behaviour when given the opportunity. More specifically, the study made the following predictions:
children exposed to aggressive models will reproduce aggressive acts resembling those of the models.
Children will imitate the behaviour of a same-sex model to a greater degree than a model of the opposite sex
Participants: Thirty-six boys and 36 girls aged between 37 and 69 months were tested. The mean age was 52
months. They used one male adult and one female adult to act as role models.
Procedure:
group 1- 24 children (12 boys and 12 girls) watched a male or female model behaving aggressively towards a toy called a ‘Bobo doll’.
group 2- Another 24 children (12 boys and 12 girls) were exposed to a non-aggressive model who played in a quiet and subdued manner for 10 minutes (playing with a tinker toy set and ignoring the bobo-doll).
group 3 - The final 24 children (12 boys and 12 girls) were used as a control group and not exposed to any model at all.
The next room contained some aggressive toys and some non-aggressive toys. The child was in the room for 20 minutes, and their behaviour was observed and rated though a one-way mirror. Observations were made at 5-second intervals, therefore, giving 240 response units for each child.
results:
- the children who saw the aggressive model made more aggressive acts than the children who saw the non-aggressive model.
- boys made more aggressive acts than girls.
- the boys in the aggressive conditions showed more aggression if the model was male than if the model was female.
- the girls in the aggressive conditions also showed more physical aggression if the model was male but more verbal aggression if the model was female.
- the exception to this general pattern was the observation of how often they punched Bobo, and in this case, the effects of gender were reversed.
Conclusion
Bobo doll experiment demonstrated that children are able to learn social behaviour such as aggression through the process of observation learning, through watching the behaviour of another person.
Evaluation of Study 1: Bashing Bobo
The study is an experiment using a matched pairs design. This means that the researchers controlled for the child’s level of aggression in the different groups.
The sample size was very small. In addition, these were all children of people working at Stanford University. It is difficult to generalise from such a sample.
The study shows that aggression may be learned, but it does not study whether aggression is innate. It is not truly a counter-argument to the theory that aggression has biological origins.
The study is ethically problematic - exposing children to adult violence against the Bobo.
The study was cross-sectional, looking only at aggression exhibited as a result of seeing the adult hit
the Bobo.
It did not monitor long-term effects on the children. It can be argued that the children experienced undue stress and there was a potential for long-term psychological effects on their behaviour.
The situation is highly controlled and it is not normal for children to be left alone with strangers in this way. The study lacks ecological validity.
Study 2: Joy et al (1986) + Charlton et al (2002)
Joy et al:
- carried out a natural experiment to find the effects of television on the level of aggression of children.
- Children in a part of Canada were tested and observed on their levels of aggression one year prior to the introduction of television and a year after.
- The study found that the children were more aggressive a year after they gained access to a TV.
Charlton et al:
- A similar study was carried out in St Helena however in the 2002 study there weren’t any changed in the aggression of children.
Evaluation of Study 2 (SCT): Joy, Charlton et al
Both studies were natural experiments. This means that they had high ecological validity - carried out under natural conditions. However, it also means that internal validity was low.
There are several uncontrolled variables in these studies.
Levels of aggression were measured by the researchers by using a checklist. The researchers
worked in teams - using researcher triangulation - in order to improve the reliability of the ratings.
The comments given by parents and teachers were also used to confirm the level of aggression -
in other words, they used data triangulation.
One of the problems of natural experiments is that they are difficult to replicate - making it difficult
to establish the reliability of the findings. It also makes it difficult to generalize the findings.
Both studies used a pre-test/post-test design, allowing researchers to observe change over
time. As the studies were poorly controlled, it is not really possible to determine a cause-and-effect relationship.
Evaluation of Social Cognitive Theory
strengths:
- there is evidence to support it
- the theory has been shown to have validity in the lab and in natural environments.
- can also be applied to a range of behaviours, not only aggression.
- it explains the cultural differences in behaviour
and it shows that we can learn without having to directly receive a reward or punishment.
limitations:
- the theory is only one perspective
- does not account for biological factors in aggression
- how biology affects SCT could be a factor
- the theory cannot explain all behaviour as some children did not imitate the model in spite of meeting the criteria of the theory.
