AO3 of SLT

• Practical applications

  Increases understanding on human behaviour such as criminal behaviour, when someone is exposed to role models who commit crimes they identify with these models and develop the expectation of positive consequences for their own criminal behaviour.
• Treatment implications

  Effective treatment for phobias which is based on modelling that encourages patients to learn a more appropriate response to the feared object or situation by observing and imitating a role model’s reaction to the same feared object or situation.
• Lacks ecological validity

  Due to the controlled artificial environment of a laboratory the behaviours that were measured were not the same as genuine aggression. Therefore, we cannot assume that the children in this experiment would act aggressively towards another child (based on their actions towards the Bobo doll) outside of the experimental setting. Therefore, it is questionable if the findings can be generalised to real – life situations.
• Oversimplistic

  Focuses exclusively on the processes of social learning and ignores other influences e.g. biological factors. One consistent finding was boys were more aggressive than girls. This can be explained by hormonal factors where boys possess greater quantities of testosterone linking to increased aggressive behaviour.