Social Influence

• Social influence for 16 markers

  • Nurture
  • Reductionist (but takes into account cognitive factors)
  • Nomothetic
• Assumptions:

  • Albert Bandura developed Social Learning Theory and like other learning approaches he agreed with Behaviourists that all behaviour is learned 
  • SLT suggest that learning can occur directly as in classical and operant conditioning or indirectly 
  • However, in SLT he proposed that people learnt through observation and imitation
• Developed by?

  Albert Bandura
• Bobo doll experiment: 1961

  • direct observation
  • studied the effects on children of watching aggressive behaviour (exposed to violent television)
  • People were unaware of the effects of violence on the young and impressionable minds of children
• Cathartic ideas

  Drama: Arto->being exposed to violence will release/purge you, watching violence reduces aggression (untrue)
• Procedure of the Bobo doll experiment

  • Children aged 3-5 
  • Adult in the room with a child and a bunch of toys 
  • Adult beat up an inflatable doll, called the Bobo inflatable doll for 10 minutes 
  • Adult leaves the child alone with the same toys 
  • Did the same but using television
  • Two groups: 1) child watched adult beat up the doll 2) watched a fictional character beat up the doll-> same outcome  
• Findings of the Bobo doll experiment

  • Child mimicked the violence they witnessed in all studies
  • Behaved in a much more aggressive way towards the doll-> goes against the idea of cathartics 
  • In the control group where the adult played with the doll in a calm and gentle manner, no aggression was witnessed with the imitating children
• Vicarious reinforcement

  • Indirect learning takes place when an individual observes the behaviours of others
  • The learner may imitate the behaviour but only if the behaviour is seen to be reinforced 
  • The learner observes and most importantly observes the consequences of a behaviour 
  • Learning through observation 
• Identification

  • certain mental process of identification/mental connection with the person you're observing in order to vicariously identify with them
• The Role of Mediational Processes:

  Bandura’s approach is different from classical and operant conditioning as it relies on a series of mental processes that mediate and intervene in whether learning takes place or not
• The mediational processes

  • Attention: the extent to which we notice others behaviours 
  • Retention: how well we remember the behaviour
  • Motor reproduction: the ability of the observer to copy the behaviour
  • Motivation: the will to perform the behaviour (depends on level of anticipated award)
• What is identification?

  • People and especially children tend to learn from and copy those people that they identify most strongly with. These types of people are called role models. 
  • The processes of copying role models is called modelling
  • A role model is likely to possess similar characteristics to the person observing their behaviour. For example, someone of similar age, gender, culture and ethnicity
  • Other types of role models are those people perceived as having high social status or who are very attractive or high levels of success 
• Evaluation: Strength

  Cognitive factors

  • Is not as simplistic as classical and operant conditioning as the social learning theory takes into account the importance of cognitive factors and thinking in learning 
  • SLT provides a more comprehensive explanation of human learning by recognising the role of mediational processes
• Evaluation: Weakness

  Contrived Lab Studies

  • Contrived nature of the experiment as children are aware of the artificial nature of the situation 
  • Children many have believed that the main reason of the doll is to strike it so were simply behaving in a way they thought was expected 
  • Lacks ecological validity
• Evaluation: Strength

  Real world application

  • Able to explain cultural differences in behaviour 
  • Accounts how children learn through what is around them (media, cultural norms, different societies)
  • Increases the validity
• Reciprocal determinism


  • This is through the behaviours that we choose to perform 
  • Suggest that there is some free will in how be behave (unlike traditional behaviourists)