Social learning theory approaches

• Who do social learning psychologists agree with?

  Social learning psychologists agree with behaviourists however they argue that human behaviour cannot be understood without cognitive processes that occur with a stimuli and a response.
• What does the meditational response consist of?

  Attention,retention,reproduction and motivation.This must happen between observing a model perform a behaviour (stimuli) and imitating that behaviour (response).
• What is vicarious reinforcement?

  This occurs when we see someone rewarded and praised for a good act which makes us more likely to imitate that behaviour.
• What is vicarious punishment?

  Seeing someone get punished for an action which therefore makes us less likely to imitate that behaviour.
• What is modelling?

  Individuals we observe and imitate are called models.Live models include parents,friends,family and members.We can learn from symbolic models such as characters from movies and book.
• What is identification?


  Models we are more likely to imitate.This could be due to models with similar characteristics such as gender,age or people perceived to be attractive or of high status.
• What was Bandura (1961) Experiment

  Procedure-participants were children ages three to six.One group observed an adult demonstrating physical and verbal aggression towards a bobo doll.The second group watched an adult play non aggressively.FINDINGS-children that were exposed to an aggressive model were more likely to be aggressive themselves (Imitation).Boys were more likely to mimic an aggressive male model (identification).
• Social learning theory positive evaluations

  It is supported by robust evidence,for example the bobo doll study has high internal validity due to its laboratory setting.

  it acknowledges roles of consciousness and rationality,providing a more believeable explaination for complex behaviours.
• What are negative points of the social learning theory.?

  It may not translate to real life scenarios,such as imitating televised violence on TV.

  it relies on inferences,processes such as identification are not directly observable but are inferred from behaviour.