Social Learning theory Flashcards
Who pioneered social learning theory?
Albert Bandura- he agreed with behaviourists that behaviour is learned from experience, but proposed that people learn from observation and limitation of others.
What is vicarious reinforcement?
SLT suggests that simply observing other receiving a reward is enough to motivate the desire to imitate the behaviour to also receive the reward.
What is imitation?
Copying the behaviour of others.
What are the 4 mediational processes?
They are cognitive factors involved in learning and determine if a new response is required.
1.Attention- The extent to which we notice certain behaviours.
2.Retention- How well the behaviour is remembered
3.Motor reproduction- The ability of the observer to perform the behaviour
- Motivation- The will to perform the behaviour, which is often determined by wether the behaviour was rewarded or punished.
What is identification?
The desire to be associated with a particular group often because the person/ group possesses certain desirable characteristics.
A person that they identify with is called a role model and the process of imitating a role model is called modelling.
Role models:
Attractive
Charismatic
Similar characteristics- age, hobbies
What was Banduras research on role models?
Aims- To examine if the sex of the role model affected the participants and if same-sex models had a more significant influence on behaviour.
To examine the effect of the continual influence of the model of behaviour.
Procedure- 72 participants (children) who watched an adult behave in an aggressive way towards a Bobo doll.
When these children were later observed playing with various toys, including the Bobo doll, they behaved much more aggressively towards the doll and the other toys than those who had observed a non-aggressive adult.
Conclusion- Observing a role model show aggressive behaviour may motivate a child to imitate that aggressive behaviour in a different setting.
Evaluation of Banduras Bobo doll study.
It was a well controlled observational study with a clear independent variable which means that the procedure is replicable and thus could be repeated to test for reliability.
There are ethical issues- Young children being exposed to an aggressive adult is problematic.
Bobo dolls are designed to be hit so, it is hard to judge the behaviour of participants who dod so, affecting the validity of the study as there could be demand characteristics.
The experiment only shows short-term effects of observed aggression, making it difficult to see if there are long-term effects.
Evaluation: What is one strength of the Social learning theory?
It recognises the importance of cognitive factors in learning.
Neither classical or operant conditioning can offer an adequate account of learning on their own. Humans and animals store information about the behaviour of others and use this to make judgements about when it is appropriate to perform certain actions.
This suggests that SLT provides a more comprehensive explanation of human learning by recognising the role of mediational processes.
Evaluation: What is one limitation of SLT?
The evidence on which it is based on was gathered through lab studies.
Lab studies can be affected by demand characteristics- Bobo doll study because the main reason for the doll is to strike it so the children were simply behaving in a way that they thought was expected.
this suggests that the research may tell us little about how children actually learn aggression in everyday life.
Evaluation: Another strength: real wold application
SLT has the advantage of being able to explain cultural differences in behaviour.
SLT principles, such as modelling, imitation and reinforcement can account for how children learn from others around them, including media.
This provides a good understanding of behaviours.
This increases the value of the approach as it can account for real-world behaviour.
