Social Learning Theory Flashcards
What is the social learning theory?
Learning through observing others and imitating behaviours that are rewarded.
What is modelling?
A form of learning where individuals learn a particular behaviour by observing another individual performing that behaviour.
What is imitation?
The action of using someone or something as a model and copying their behaviour.
What is identification?
A form of influence where an individual adopts an attitude or behaviour because they want to be associated with a particular person or group.
What is vicarious reinforcement?
Learning that is not a result of direct reinforcement of behaviour, but through observing someone else being reinforced for that behaviour.
What are meditational processes?
Refer to the internal mental processes that exist between environmental stimuli and the response made by an individual to those stimuli.
Who did a key study?
Bandura
When was this key study done?
1961
What was the key study?
Bandura carried out an experiment involving children who observed aggressive or non-aggressive adult models and were tested for imitative learning in the absence of the model
What was the procedure of the study?
Half the children were exposed to adult models interacting aggressively with a life-sized Bobo doll and half exposed to non-aggressive models.
The aggressive model displayed distinctive physically aggressive acts towards the doll, e.g. striking it with a mallet, accompanied by verbal aggression such as saying ‘POW’.
Following the exposure to the model, children were frustrated by being shown attractive toys which they were not allowed to play with.
They were then taken to a room where, among other toys, there was a Bobo doll.
What were the findings of the study?
Children who observed the aggressive model reproduced a good deal of physically and verbally aggressive behaviour resembling that of the model. Children who observed the non-aggressive model exhibited virtually no aggression towards the doll.
About 1/3 of the children who observed the aggressive model repeated the models verbal responses while none of the children who had observed the non-aggressive model made verbally aggressive remarks.
What was found in a follow-up to the study?
Bandura and Walters found that children who saw the model being rewarded for aggressive acts were more likely to show a high level of aggression in their own play.
What are the evaluative points?
Social learning theory has useful applications.
Research support for identification.
A problem of causality.
A problem of complexity.
The importance of identification in social learning of health behaviours.
