Social Learning Theory Flashcards
What are the three key parts to social learning theory?
- Identification with role models
- The role of cognition
- Vicarious reinforcement
What are some SLT assumptions?
- Agree that some behaviour is directly reinforced and learnt from experience
- Argue that not all behaviour is learnt through conditioning
- We learn through observing role models and imitating behaviour
What is identification?
Where people, mostly children, copy the people they are influenced by and copy there role models. E.g. using celebrities, footballer using sports equipment influences other sportspeople.
What does ARRM stand for?
Attention
Retention
Reproduction
Motivation (intrinsic and extrinsic)
What is vicarious reinforcement?
Seeing someone being rewarded or seeing someone being punished.
E.g. If someone is talking when they shouldn’t and the teacher gives them a negative the other students may not talk.
What does attention means in ARRM?
Focus on the important part of the action
What does retention mean in ARRM?
Info needs to be held in the memory.
What doe reproduction mean in ARRM?
The ability is needed for the behaviour to be recreated
What does motivation mean in ARRM?
Consequences determined if an action would be repeated
What does intrinsic motivation mean in ARRM?
Inherent satisfaction - feels good to copy parents
What does extrinsic motivation mean in ARRM?
Something tangible
What was the original study of Bandura (1996)?
Recorded behaviour of young children who observed an aggressive role model e.g. adult hit bobo doll with hammer/ shouted abuse.
When the children were taken into a room with a bobo doll they behaved aggressively towards the bobo doll.
Those who has seen a non aggressive model did not behave aggressively.
Boys were more likely to copy and imitate a male adult role model.
What was the second version on Bandura (1996)?
Showed videos to children where an adult behaved aggressively towards a bobo doll.
One group of children saw the adult being praised for their behaviour. A second group saw the adult being punished for their behaviour. The control group did not see the adult being punished or rewarded for their behaviour.
The group who had seen an adult being praised were more aggressive, the group who saw the adult being punished were less aggressive.
What are negatives of bobo doll study?
- lacks generalisability used 72 children
- cultural bias - came from one nursery
- unethical - used children
What are some positives if the Bandura study (1996)?
- standardised procedure - replicated - different versions
- contributed to our understanding of how children learn behaviour
- control group to make comparisons
Strengths of social learning theory?
- Looks at more factors in explaining behaviour than behaviourism e.g. it includes rewards but also the importance of cognitive factors in behaviour e.g. ARRM
- Can explain cultural differences in behaviour e.g. anorexia in western cultures where role models are slim
- We are not just determined by our environment (S-R) links, like the behaviourist approach says – according to SLT, we choose to
- perform certain behaviours due to mediational factors (we think before we chose to copy an action- ARRM)
Weaknesses of social learning theory?
• Evidence is based on lab studies (Bandura)
• Doesn’t incorporate biological factors e.g. Bandura’s study the children who were male may have been more aggressive than
females due to differing levels of testosterone
