Social Learning Theory Flashcards
Who created social learning theory?
Albert Bandura
Name the key assumptions of SLT.
- Agrees with behaviourists that behaviour is learnt from experience
- Individuals learn through observation and imitation of others
- Learning occurs both directly and indirectly
What is vicarious reinforcement?
- Reinforcement which is not directly experienced but occurs through observing someone else being reinforced for a behaviour
- The learner observes a behaviour but most importantly observes the consequences of a behaviour
What is the role of meditational processes?
Focuses on how mental cognitive factors are involved in learning
Mental factors mediate in the learning process to determine whether new responses are required
What is the order of these meditational processes?
Attention
Retention (learning)
Motor reproduction
Motivation (performance)
What is attention?
The extent to which we notice certain behaviours
What is retention?
How well the behaviour is remembered
What is motor reproduction?
The ability of the observer to perform the behaviour
What is motivation?
The will to perform the behaviour
What is identification?
People are more likely to imitate people they identify with
The person they identify with is called the model and this process is called modelling
This occurs when models possess similar qualities / attractiveness / high status
What was Bandura’s experiment called?
The BoBo doll experiment (1961)
What was the aim of the experiment?
To investigate if social behaviors (i.e., aggression) can be acquired by observation and imitation
Explain the method of the experiment.
36 boys and 36 girls from the same nursery aged between 3 to 6 years old
The children were pre-tested and put in matched pairs based on aggression levels
Condition A = shown video of aggressive behaviour towards the doll
Condition B = shown video of nice behaviour towards the doll
Condition C = no video was shown
The room contained both aggressive and non-aggressive toys
They were in the room for 20 minutes and observed every 5 seconds, giving 240 response units per child
What were the results of the experiment?
- Children who observed the aggressive model made far more imitative aggressive responses than those who were in the non-aggressive or control groups
- There was more partial and non-imitative aggression among those children who had observed aggressive behavior, although the difference for non-imitative aggression was small
- The girls in the aggressive model condition also showed more physically aggressive responses if the model was male, but more verbally aggressive responses if the model was female
- Boys were more physically aggressive than girls
What is the conclusion of this experiment?
It demonstrated that children are able to learn social behavior such as aggression through the process of observation learning, through watching the behavior of another person
