EVALUATION

• EVALUATION OF SLT?

  + comprehensive explanation

  -incomplete explanation

  -laboratory experiments

  -fails to consider biology

  -Bobo doll

  + culture
• COMPREHENSIVE EXPLANATION?

  • considers thought processes role in deciding whether behaviour should be imitated or not
  • recognises role of mediational processes
  • more comprehensive
  • however, emphasises importance of thought processes more than Behaviourists yet does not explain them
• INCOMPLETE EXPLANATION?

  • not full explanation for all behaviour
  • especially when there is no apparent role model for an individual to imitate behaviour
  • e.g. one individual having psychopathic behaviour in a family
• LABORATORY EXPERIMENTS?

  • many ideas developed in a laboratory setting
  • artificial nature
  • respond to demand characteristics (e.g. role of Bobo doll)
  • lacks mundane realism
  • lacks ecological validity
  • cannot be generalised to all instances of learning
• FAILS TO CONSIDER BIOLOGY?

  • Bandura makes little reference to impact of biological factors
  • one consistent finding was that boys were more aggressive than girls
  • can be attributed to hormonal factors (e.g. testosterone)
  • biology not accounted for in SLT
  • sees behaviours as environmentally determined but some may be innate
• BOBO DOLL?

  • main purpose is to strike it
  • children responding to demand characteristics
  • research shows little about how children behave in everyday life
  • Bobo dolls couldn't move or react
  • participants may have behaved differently if they could
• CULTURE?

  • used to explain cultural differences
  • different cultures have different environments
  • explains why gender roles are different in different cultures