Social Learning Theory

• what are the key assumptions of SLT?

  • That learning occurs through the observation and imitation of behaviour performed by role models, who model behaviour in a social environment.
  • SLT recognises the importance of cognitive processes - mediational processes - and rejects the notion that learning is purely the outcome of a stimulus-response loop.
• what are the 4 mediational processes?

  attention, retention, reproduction, and motivation.
• what is vicarious reinforcement?

  learning from the observation of others
• method of Bandura (1961)

  • 72 children (36 male and 36 female) aged between 3 and 6 years old were put into one of three groups for 10 minutes:
  • Aggressive model – the child played in a room while an adult hit and shouted at a “Bobo doll”.
  • 2) Non-aggressive model – the child played in a room while an adult played quietly with a construction set.
  • 3) Control group – the child did not see a model.
• results of Bandura (1961)

  • Children who saw the aggressive model produced more aggressive acts than those in either of the other two groups.
  • Boys imitated same-sex models more than girls.
  • Girls imitated more physical aggression if they saw male models, and more verbal aggression if they saw female models.
• strengths of SLT (1)

  • A strength of SLT is its application to real-world issues. It has long been a feature in explanations of criminal behaviour (Sykes and Matza, 1957) and recent research has continued that focus (Akers, 1998). Consequently, the principles of SLT can be used to provide a positive impact on promotional health campaigns, and indirectly help combat problem behaviours like alcoholism.
• strengths of SLT (2)

  • Bandura, in his research with the infamous Bobo doll, and later work with other researchers investigating the role of vicarious learning in shaping behaviour, take a nomothetic approach as he attempts to generate general laws of behaviour which can be widely applied.
  • Social learning theorists recognise that behaviour is controlled by outside forces, such as modelling, but that cognitions, in the form of mediational processes, also have a role to play; as such SLT demonstrates a soft determinism stance.
• limitations of SLT (1)

  • Bandura made extensive use of the experimental laboratory method, which is artificial, strictly-controlled and contrived in its very nature. As a result, there is the possibility of demand characteristics occurring whereby the children pick up on cues in the environment, guess the aim of the investigation and adjust their behaviour accordingly, lowering the internal validity of the study. Therefore, the participants may have been acting in an aggressive way because that is what they thought was expected
• limitations of SLT (2)

  • One limitation of SLT revolves around the issue of causality. It is not clear if people learn behaviour from models, or if they seek out models who exhibit behaviour or attitudes they already favour. Also, SLT struggles to explain complex behaviours like gender development. Children are exposed to a whole host of influences when growing up, and these different influences interact in a complex way. Consequently, it is difficult to distinguish behaviours that develop because of SLT from the many other factors that contribute to human behaviour