Social Learning Theory

Question 1

What does Bandura’s Learning Cognitive Theory emphasise?

Answer 1

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.

Question 2

What does social learning theoru regard gender identity and role as?

Answer 2

a set of behaviors that are learned from the environment

Question 3

What is the main way that gender behaviours are learnt?

Answer 3

through the process of observational learning

Question 4

What are the individuals that are observed called?

Answer 4

Models

Question 5

What are some examples of influential models?

Answer 5

such as parents within the family, characters on children’s TV, friends within their peer group and teachers at school

Question 6

What happens after a child has payed attention to the models?

Answer 6

encode their behavior at a later time they may imitate (i.e. copy) the behavior they have observed

Question 7

What makes a child more likely to imitate the behaviours of a model?

Answer 7

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.

Question 8

What is another way that makes a child more likely to imitate the behaviour of a model?

Answer 8

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.

Question 9

What did Williams (1986) carried out a natural experiment on?

Answer 9

an isolated community called Notel where TV was about to be introduced for the first time

Question 10

What was measured before and after TV was introduced?

Answer 10

Measures of attitudes and behavior were taken before and after the introduction of TV

Question 11

What was used for comparison

Answer 11

Two other towns

Question 12

What did William’s find?

Answer 12

in the two years following the introduction of TV, the children of Notel became much more stereotyped in the gender attitudes

Question 13

What does William’s study imply?

Answer 13

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.

Question 14

What is the social learning approach unable to explain?

Answer 14

Why children reared in one-parent or homosexual families do not have difficulties with the development of gender identity

Question 15

What are some of the issues with the social learning approach?

Answer 15

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.

Question 16

What does evidence that gender role behaviour is consistent across cultures suggest?

Answer 16

that gender role is inherited.

Question 17

In support of the nature debate what have psychologists looked at?

Answer 17

cultures and tried to show behaviors that are not influenced by gender role

Question 18

What did William and Best explore?

Answer 18

gender stereotypes in 30 different nations involving 2800 university students as participants

Question 19

What were the students given?

Answer 19

a 300 item adjective (e.g. aggressive, kind, gentle) checklist and asked to decide whether is was most associated with men or women

Question 20

What did William and Best find?

Answer 20

there was a broad consensus across countries with men being seen as more dominant and aggressive and women being seen as nurturing and deferent

Question 21

What do their results suggest?

Answer 21

This suggests there are universal gender stereotypes which seem to point to gender roles being biologically determined.

Question 22

What are the methodological issues undermining Williams and Best’s study?

Answer 22

they were all students who share common attributes and so they may not be representative of all social groups

Question 23

What was the issue with Williams and Best’s checklist?

Answer 23

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

Question 24

What did research from Buss (1989) include?

Answer 24

a wide ranging sample from the population and still supports the idea that gender role is biological

Question 25

What did Buss explore?

Answer 25

what males and females looked for in a marriage partner

Question 26

What did Buss’s study involve?

Answer 26

over 10,000 people from 37 different cultures, including a wide diversity of ethnic, religious, political and economic groups

Question 27

What did Buss’s study find?

Answer 27

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.

Question 28

What did Margaret Mead find?

Answer 28

Supporting evidence that culture influences gender role

Question 29

Who did Mead study?

Answer 29

social groups in Papua New Guinea

Question 30

What did Mead initially argue about Arapesh men and women?

Answer 30

That they were gentle

Question 31

What did mead initally argue about Mundugumor men and women?

Answer 31

That they were violent

Question 32

What did Mead argue about the Tchambuli?

Answer 32

Women being dominant and men dependent

Question 33

What did Mead conclude about her data?

Answer 33

cultural determinism and that gender differences are determined by social factors.
this supports the view that gender role is influenced by nurture

Question 34

What is a methodological strength of Mead’s study?

Answer 34

that is was a natural experiment, which means that it can provide a true reflection of gender behavior

Question 35

What are methodological issues with Mead’s study?

Answer 35

• 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