social learning theory

• social learning theory

  • bridge between the traditional behaviorism and cognitive approach
  • proposed by albert bandura
  • concerned with humans rather than animals
  • sees people as active manipulators of their own environment
• social learning theory...

  • agrees with behaviourist learning theories - classical / operant conditioning
  • adds 2 important ideas - mediating processes between stimuli and responses, observational learning
• vicarious reinforcement

  • seeing someone else get a reward for the same behaviour, and then the behaviour is reinforced and strengthened
  • sometimes it doesnt matter what the behaviour is as long as attention is a reward
• how social learning differs from classical / operant conditioning

  • social learning explains how we learn behaviour directly through observing others (we can learn behaviour indirectly as well as directly through our own experiences)
  • social learning considers mental processes which occur between a stimulus and response (these were ignored by behaviourists)
• mediational processes

  • attention - person pays attention to someone elses behaviour (the model)
  • encoding - they memorise the behaviour they have observed
  • imitation - they practice the behaviour themselves
  • motivation - given a reason, they may use it (based on vicarious reinforcement)
  • motor reproduction - must be physically possible
• social learning theorists say that there are things that take place within an organism that mediate between the stimulus and response.
• social learning theory and aggression

  • suggests aggression is learnt from environment (rather than instinctual) through reinforcement and modelling
  • modelling is learning through observation of others which may lead to imitation if behaviour leads to positive consequences
  • imitation depends on consequences of the actions
  • can be applied to aggression - parents, peers, media characters, violence on television
• social learning theory eval - :( overly artificial


  • bobo doll experiment is not the same as hitting a real person
  • demand characteristics - children may have belived they were meant to have behaved aggressively
  • however, other studies demonstrate children are more likely to hurt other children after seeing violent behaviour (liebert and baron)
• social learning theory eval - :) provides a more complete approach


  • provides more credible explanation of transmission of behaviour (violence) than traditional behaviourst views
  • investigated models and behaviours that are more likely to be imitated
  • attempted to integrate cognitive and psychoanalytic concepts with traditional behaviourist theory
  • however rejects role of innate factors in behaviour like aggression
• implications for controlling aggression - social learning theory


  • if aggressive behaviour isnt reinforced in a society then it will not naturally occur
  • however many examples of aggression already occur in majority of societies so theory would be more realistically applied to reducing aggression
  • could be achieved by ensuring aggression isnt reinforced , or by supplying negative consequences
  • but these negative consequences could be seen as agression in themselves ('aggression breeds aggression')
  • munroe and munroe found childhood aggression is highest in households where families highly punish their children for showing aggression
  • media violence should be reduced