Social Learning Theory- Bandura Flashcards
What is banduras theory
Bandura applied Jeffrey’s ideas about positive reinforcement but also explored the influence of social learning from the wider social groups
Behaviour is learned through the observation and imitation of high status role models for example parents or peers
What was his bobo doll study
Children who witnessed aggressive behaviour from the adult were more likely to imitate it. They were even more likely to imitate when that saw the role model being praised for their behaviour
Group 1: Children who witnessed adults being aggressive towards to doll were more likely to imitate it
Group 2: children who witnessed adults ignored the doll were less likely to imitate aggressive behaviour
When adults were praised for aggressive behaviour children more likely to imitate to when adults were told off for aggressive behaviour
Boys were more likely to be more aggressive then girls no matter the role model
Name a supporting study
Osborne and west(1982) who compared sons of criminal and non criminal fathers. They found that 13% of the sons of non-criminal fathers has a criminal conviction whilist those 40% of those with fathers had a conviction
Strength 1
P- unlike skinner bandura takes into an count of the fact people are social beings who learn from the experiences of others not just our own direct experience
E- for example if a criminal sees there peers or family being rewarded for committing crimes they more likely to commit crime than if they saw there peer or family getting arrested
E- This shows that human are not passive stimulus response links and allows more exploration of the idea of free will and conscious choice when it come to committing crime
Strength 2
P- it has positive implications for crime control
P- for example bandura showed that aggressive behaviour being rewarded imitated that behaviour
P- this is useful as it shows the importance of role models in learning deviant behaviour
Weakness
P- the theory is based on lab studies
E- for example the bobo doll study was carried out in a controlled, artificial environment
E- these artifical conditions make it difficult to generalise to real life settings and it lowers the ecological validity of the theory
