Social Learning Theory Flashcards
What does Bandura’s Learning Cognitive Theory emphasise?
that parents, peers and media figures act as gender-appropriate models whom children base their behaviors on and who contribute to children’s cognitions about gender identity.
What does social learning theoru regard gender identity and role as?
a set of behaviors that are learned from the environment
What is the main way that gender behaviours are learnt?
through the process of observational learning
What are the individuals that are observed called?
Models
What are some examples of influential models?
such as parents within the family, characters on children’s TV, friends within their peer group and teachers at school
What happens after a child has payed attention to the models?
encode their behavior at a later time they may imitate (i.e. copy) the behavior they have observed
What makes a child more likely to imitate the behaviours of a model?
more likely to attend to and imitate those people it perceives as similar to itself.
Consequently, it is more likely to imitate behavior modelled by people the same sex as it is.
What is another way that makes a child more likely to imitate the behaviour of a model?
Responses from the people around them.
It is likely that the child will be reinforced for acting in gender appropriate ways and punished or ignored for gender inappropriate behavior.
What did Williams (1986) carried out a natural experiment on?
an isolated community called Notel where TV was about to be introduced for the first time
What was measured before and after TV was introduced?
Measures of attitudes and behavior were taken before and after the introduction of TV
What was used for comparison
Two other towns
What did William’s find?
in the two years following the introduction of TV, the children of Notel became much more stereotyped in the gender attitudes
What does William’s study imply?
that the media and media stereotypes can have a profound effect on how children think about their own and others’ gender and this has led to pressure being put upon programme makers to try to present males and females in non-gender-typed ways to encourage women to pursue, for example, careers typically defined as male: e.g. a lawyer.
What is the social learning approach unable to explain?
Why children reared in one-parent or homosexual families do not have difficulties with the development of gender identity
What are some of the issues with the social learning approach?
Much of the research done on the damaging effects of gender stereotyping has focused on the way in which these stereotypes serve to further suppress women. However, men are hurt as well.
What does evidence that gender role behaviour is consistent across cultures suggest?
that gender role is inherited.
In support of the nature debate what have psychologists looked at?
cultures and tried to show behaviors that are not influenced by gender role
What did William and Best explore?
gender stereotypes in 30 different nations involving 2800 university students as participants
What were the students given?
a 300 item adjective (e.g. aggressive, kind, gentle) checklist and asked to decide whether is was most associated with men or women
What did William and Best find?
there was a broad consensus across countries with men being seen as more dominant and aggressive and women being seen as nurturing and deferent
What do their results suggest?
This suggests there are universal gender stereotypes which seem to point to gender roles being biologically determined.
What are the methodological issues undermining Williams and Best’s study?
they were all students who share common attributes and so they may not be representative of all social groups
What was the issue with Williams and Best’s checklist?
did not include an ‘equal’ category alongside the ‘male’ and ‘female’ categories so this means that the division between male and female categories may be exaggerated, because people were forced to make a choice
What did research from Buss (1989) include?
a wide ranging sample from the population and still supports the idea that gender role is biological
What did Buss explore?
what males and females looked for in a marriage partner
What did Buss’s study involve?
over 10,000 people from 37 different cultures, including a wide diversity of ethnic, religious, political and economic groups
What did Buss’s study find?
Women desired mates who had good financial prospects, men placed more importance on physical attractiveness, men universally wanted mates who were younger than them, both sexes wanted mates who were intelligent, kind and dependable.
What did Margaret Mead find?
Supporting evidence that culture influences gender role
Who did Mead study?
social groups in Papua New Guinea
What did Mead initially argue about Arapesh men and women?
That they were gentle
What did mead initally argue about Mundugumor men and women?
That they were violent
What did Mead argue about the Tchambuli?
Women being dominant and men dependent
What did Mead conclude about her data?
cultural determinism and that gender differences are determined by social factors.
this supports the view that gender role is influenced by nurture
What is a methodological strength of Mead’s study?
that is was a natural experiment, which means that it can provide a true reflection of gender behavior
What are methodological issues with Mead’s study?
- Demand characteristics
Natives providing Mead with the information she wanted to hear - Observer affect
The tribes were different because they were aware of being watched - Western values used to measure the behaviours, this may be different
