SLT

• Vicarious reinforcement

  Observing others being rewarded for their behaviour (positive reinforcement) makes the individual indirectly reinforced and will start producing that same behaviour
• Identification

  • people will imitate those that they can identify with
  • these people are role models and will have similar characteristics to the individual imitating them
• Mediational processes

  • Attention: a behaviour is observed and noticed
  • Retention: the behaviour is remembered
  • Reproduction: the behaviour is reproduced
  • Motivation: the behaviour is rewarded and it does happen again or punished and it doesn't happen again

  
• SLT evaluation:

  + takes cognition into account:

  • humans make judgements on their actions, not just passive conditioning
  • Bandura: "learning would be exceedingly laborious, not to mention hazardous, if people had to rely solely on their own actions"

  + explains cultural differences: different cultures have different role models that children imitate that leads to difference in behaviours

  - underestimate effects of biology: boys were always more aggressive than girls in the Bobo doll experiment, suggests there is a biological factor unaccounted for in SLT explanation
• Bobo doll study

  • children who watched a role model (often parental figure) act violently towards a bobo doll would also act violently towards it
  • children who watched a video of someone being aggressive towards a bobo doll and get praised were more likely to be aggressive to it than groups who did not watch that video or watched a video of the same behaviour being punished
  • suggests children imitate the behaviour they see around them