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Heather Zins
Educational Psychology
Dr. Mark Hawkes
November 10, 2014
Bandura: Watching is Learning
Banduras Social Learning Theory is considerably one of the most important learning
theories ever discovered. Bandura discovered that through modeling, people learn what is
socially acceptable and what behaviors will be punished, rewarded, and what behaviors are
important to exhibit. The BoBo doll experiment is Banduras breakthrough experiment to show
modeling and how it influences childrens actions through observing and imitating. There are
many types of models and ways of reinforcements that encourage or discourage someone from a
particular action or behavior.
Albert Bandura was born in late 1925 and at an early age became captivated with
psychology. He graduated from University of British Columbia with a degree in psychology and
later got his Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the University of Iowa. After this, he was offered
a job teaching at Stanford University. While at Stanford, he conducted his famous Bobo doll
experiment. During the Bobo doll experiment, children were introduced to a toy that they had
not seen before, the Bobo doll. In this experiment, they observed 36 boys and 36 girls
interacting with the Bobo doll. They split the children into groups and showed them a video of
how to play with the Bobo doll; 24 children watched an adult beating the doll, throwing it, and
yelling hostile language at the doll. Another set of 24 children watched a non-aggressive model

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and 24 children were shown no model of behavior. After this, each child was taken to a room
with attractive toys and, when the child started playing with them, they were told they needed to
be saved for other children. The child was then taken to a room with aggressive toys and nonaggressive toys and observations were taken from a one way mirror. Once the observations were
done, it showed that children who watched the aggressive model were more likely to be
aggressive towards the Bobo doll. It also showed that children were more likely to imitate same
sex actions, whether they watched a male or a female model; and, boys were more physically
aggressive than girls.
"Learning would be exceedingly laborious, not to mention hazardous, if people had to
rely solely on the effects of their own actions to inform them what to do. Fortunately,
most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling: from observing others
one forms an idea of how new behaviors are performed, and on later occasions this coded
information serves as a guide for action."
-Albert Bandura, Social Learning Theory, 1977(Cherry)
As they concluded what is now to be a very famous experiment, they discovered that aggression
and behaviors are learned through the observation of others.
There are different types of models that children will learn from. There are aggressive
models and non-aggressive models like we saw in the Bobo doll experiment; but there are also
different models that many people do not think about when around children such as parents
within the family, characters on childrens TV, friends within their peer group and teachers at
school. Theses models provide examples of behavior to observe and imitate, e.g. masculine and
feminine, pro and anti-social etc (Simply Psychology). After observing these models, children
start to imitate what they have seen whether it is subconsciously or consciously. Every child has

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a few certain models that they connect with on a deeper level than the other models they have in
their lives; this could be a parent, teacher, TV star, or fictitious character. Children often connect
with these special people because these people have a characteristic that the child wishes to have,
thus they continue to watch them to try to adopt this special characteristic. As children observe
these behaviors, they begin to figure out what the different reinforcements are for their behaviors
are. Reinforcements can be positive, negative, internal or external.
Reinforcing a child for a desired behavior is an important part to teaching them what is
acceptable and what is not. A child is constantly seeking approval of anything they want their
friends to like about them, their parents to be proud of them, or they want to be the star student;
these are examples of external positive reinforcement. Internal positive reinforcement would be
a child feeling happy about what they have just done for a friend or feeling loved by their
parents. A child will behave in a way which it believes will earn approval because it desires
approval (Simply Psychology). Negative reinforcements would include getting put in a time
out for saying a foul word or getting picked on by classmate for doing something silly (external)
or feeling sad because of just being punished (internal). Reinforcements are what lead to a
change in a person of any age because they either like the outcome of what they have done
(positive reinforcement) or dislike the outcome (negative reinforcement). Another reinforcement
is called vicarious reinforcement; this is where a child thinks about how his or her actions will
affect other people. A good model will effectively show the reinforcements a child will have
with the behaviors they exhibit from day to day.
To be an effective model, there are a few things that are important to remember. The first
is attention. In order to learn, you need to be paying attention. Anything that detracts your
attention is going to have a negative effect on observational learning. If the model is interesting

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or there is a novel aspect to the situation, you are far more likely to dedicate your full attention to
learning (Cherry). The second factor is retention. These first two go hand in hand, if the child is
not paying attention, they will not retain any information; but if they are paying close attention, it
is more likely they will retain most of the information they are observing. Next is reproduction;
after a child has paid attention to the model and retained the information they have observed,
they are now able to reproduce the desired behavior and start advancing their skills in such
behavior. The last step to effective modeling is motivation. For a child to want to perform the
desired behavior, they must be motivated to perform these tasks. This is where the reinforcement
comes back into the picture. A child can be motivated to continue their behavior for being
rewarded and they can also be motivated to stop their behavior due to being punished.
Incorporating Social Learning Theory in the classroom is actually fairly simple.
Reinforcing children with their appropriate and good behaviors is one of the things that is a
must have in a classroom environment. These actions are as simple as praising a child for
saying something nice to another child. Another example would be if a child shows good
behavior in or out of the classroom by giving them a ticket; after they get so many tickets, letting
them pick a prize out of the prize basket. If the child shows some not so good behaviors, they
get one of their tickets taken away for the unacceptable behaviors. The prize basket gives the
students motivation to keep up with the good behaviors and confiscating a ticket motivates them
to get the ticket back as well as to stop the behavior that made them get the ticket taken away.
One way to model behaviors is to treat children, staff, and parents like you would like your
students to treat people. After watching one of their models show caring, understanding, and
respect the students will start to pick up on these behaviors as well.

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Through effective modeling and reinforcements, children learn most of their behavior
habits from observing parents, TV stars, fictitious characters, teachers, and peers. Albert
Bandura showed this through his famous experiment with a Bobo doll and a few different groups
of children showing their aggressive behaviors after watching a video of how to play with the
Bobo doll. Modeling behaviors shows children what behaviors are important to exhibit as well
as which ones will be rewarded and which ones will be punished. Through Banduras
experiment and the Social Learning Theory, we have discovered that watching truly is learning.

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Works Cited
"Albert Bandura | Social Learning Theory." Albert Bandura | Social Learning Theory | Simply
Psychology. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Nov. 2014.
Bandura, Albert. "Social Learning Theory." General Learning Press (1971): 1-46. EBSCO
HOST. Web. 12 Nov. 2014.
"Bobo Doll Experiment | Simply Psychology." Bobo Doll Experiment | Simply Psychology. N.p.,
n.d. Web. 9 Nov. 2014.
Cherry, Kendra. "Social Learning Theory." About Education. N.p., n.d. Web. 9 Nov. 2014.
Ormrod, Jeanne Ellis. "Basic Human Needs." Essentials of Educational Psychology. Upper
Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Merrill Prentice Hall, 2006. 18+. Print.
"Social Learning Theory (Bandura)." Learning Theories. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Nov. 2014.
"What Were Albert Bandura's Contributions to the Field of Psychology?" About. N.p., n.d. Web.
9 Nov. 2014.