Evaluation

• Cognitive factors

  One strength of the social learning theory is that it recognises the importance of cognitive factors in learning:

  • Classical and operant conditioning can't offer adequate accounts of learning on their own.
  • Humans and animals store information about the behaviour of others and use this to make judgements about when it is appropriate to perform certain actions.
  • This suggests that SLT provides a more comprehensive explanation of human learning by recognising the role of mediational processes.
• Counterpoint to cognitive factors

  SLT has been criticised for making too little reference to the influence of biological factors on social learning:

  • Recent research suggests that observational learning, the type that Bandura was talking about, may be a result of mirror neurons in the brain, which allow us to empathise with and imitate other people
  • This suggests that biological influences on social learning were under-emphasised in in SLT
• Contrived lab studies


  One limitation of social learning theory is that the evidence on which it is based was gathered through lab studies:

  • Lab studies are often criticised for their contrived nature where participants may respond to demand characteristics
  • The main purpose of the Bobo doll is to strike it; the children were simply behaving in a way that they thought was expected
  • This suggests that the research may tell us little about how children actually learn aggression in everyday life
• Real-world application


  One strength of the social learning theory is that its principles have been applied to a range of real-world behaviours:

  • SLT is able to explain to explain cultural differences in behaviour
  • SLT principles, such as modelling and imitation, can account for how children learn from others around them and this can explain how cultural norms are transmitted through particular societies
  • This increases the value of the approach as it can account for real-world behaviour