Social Learning Theory

• Social Learning Theory Assumptions?

  • we learn directly through experience but also indirectly through observing and imitating others' behaviours
  • we are not simply responding to stimuli, we do have cognitive elements to our behaviour aswell
• what is vicarious reinforcement?

  reinforcement which doesn't happen through direct experience but through observing someone else being reinforced for a behaviour
• what are mediational processes?

  Cognitive processes that occur between a stimulus and a response, meaning that they are the stages of thinking after observing a behaviour but before learning a behaviour
• what are the mediational processes?

  1. Attention - have we noticed the behaviour?
  2. Retention - have we remembered it for later on?
  3. Motor Reproduction - can we carry out the behaviour?
  4. Motivation - do we want to imitate the role model?
• how does learning occur according to SLT?

  • through imitation of role models, these are people we identify with
  • the individual observes the role model and the behaviour is imitated later on
• What is identification?

  looking up to someone similar to us (e.g gender, hobbies, attitude) that has something we don't have
• Bobo Doll Experiment - aim and method

  • aim - demonstrate aggression can be learnt through modelling

  method

  • a control group of children put into 3 groups for 10 minutes, half the children saw male role models and the other half saw female role models play
  • kids then observed playing with a range of aggressive and non-aggressive toys including the Bobo Doll
• Bobo Doll Experiment - Models

  • aggressive model - children watched an adult hit and shout at the Bobo Doll, then left by themselves to play in the room with a variety of toys
  • non-aggressive model - watched an adult play quietly with a construction set
• Bobo Doll Experiment - Results

  • children who saw the aggressive model produced more aggressive acts
  • Boys imitated same sex models more than girls
  • girls imitated more physical aggression if they saw male models and more verbal aggression if they saw female models
• Social Learning Theory - Evaluation (cognitive factors)

  Cognitive factors

  • recognises importance of cognitive factors in learning (through mediational processes)
  • suggesting SLT offers a more comprehensive explanation of learning due to its recognition of mediational processes compared to operant and classical conditioning

  Counterpoint

  • too little reference to biological factors
  • bandura claimed neural biological differences affected learning potential, but he thought learning was determined by environment
  • recent research shows learning may be determined by mirror neurons in the brain
• Social Learning Theory Evaluation

  Contrived Lab Studies

  • Evidence for SLT was gathered through lab studies
  • lab studies criticised for their contrived nature where participants may respond to demand characteristics due to low external validity
  • main purpose of the Bobo Doll is to strike it, participants may have just been acting as they thought was expected

  Real World Application

  • modelling, imitation and vicarious reinforcement can account for how children learn from others and the media and can explain how cultural norms are transmitted across societies
• Social Learning Theory Evaluation

  Reciprocal Determinism

  • bandura emphasised reciprocal determinism, say we are not just influenced by our environment but also exert influence on it by how we choose to behave
  • suggesting there is some free will in the way we behave