SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY

Origins of social learning theory

According to Skinner, all behaviour is the result of direct reinforcement such as rewards, but however not all behaviourists agreed with him. Dollard & Miller came up with the term social learning, to describe learning through observation, which was then developed by Bandura (1978) into a major theory. Even though Social Learning Theorists agree that basic learning is done through classical and operant conditioning, they say that observational learning in humans is very important. They also think that attention and memory are very important cognitive variables. Imitation requires a model who demonstrates the behaviour which is learned by the child and later repeated. Bandura et al. have highlighted the importance of this in their studies of the imitation of aggressive behaviour. motivate imitation, such as consistency, identification with the model and liking the model.

Bandura (1961)
Aim: to see if children would imitate aggression modelled by an adult, and whether or not a child was more likely to imitate a same-sex model. Method: Children aged 3 to 5 years (36 boys and 36 girls) participated in this experiment, as well as two adult models (male and female). In order to ensure that all models were equally aggressive, observations were done beforehand by an experiment who knew these children well and also their teacher. Their aggression was measured using 5 point scale based on their physical aggression, verbal aggression, aggression towards inanimate objects and aggressive inhibition. There were two phases to this experiment. In the first phase, each child was taken on their own to a room for 10 minutes with lots of toys and 5 foot Bobo doll as well as the model. There were three conditions to this experiment: Non-aggressive condition: the model played with all toys in a quiet manner. Aggressive condition: the model was playing with all toys for the first 5 minutes but then began acting aggressively towards the Bobo doll, by kicking and punching it, throwing the doll across the room accompanying all that with words like POW. Control group: the report does not say what treatment these children received.

Cognitive variables involved

Bandura believes that there are a number of cognitive variables involved in observational learning such as: Paying attention: the learner pays attention to the parts of behaviour that seem to be important and ignore those that dont. Memory: observer must be able to remember the behaviour that he just observed over extended periods of time. Reproduction, where the learner must accurately reproduce behaviour, which may require practice; and finally motivation, where the learner wants to demonstrate what he has learned.

Reinforcement
Skinner believed that a reward stamps in behaviour that has just occurred, but for Bandura, reinforcements act as information about how to act in the future. For example, if a person receives reinforcement, or sees someone else receive it (vicarious reinforcement), they might think that since this action results in an award, they want to do this in future. There are also some other factors that

Second phase of this experiment was taking children into another room where they would imitate models behaviour. To do this they needed to slightly provoke children, by bringing them into a room full of beautiful toys and saying that they couldnt play with these. Then they were moved to another room full of aggressive toys, some non-aggressive toys and a 3-foot Bobo doll. The child was observed by the experimenter and also the model and another observer through one-way mirror and was playing for 20 minutes. The observers recorded what the child was doing every 5 seconds.

Results: Bandura has concluded that the theory was demonstrated in the study, since the children showed signs of observational learning and he also observed that girls were more likely to imitate verbal aggression whereas boys imitated physical aggression. Even though this study supports Social Learning Theory, the study has low ecological validity, as it was conducted in a laboratory and this study does not necessarily predict if a child is repeatedly exposed to violence on TV or aggression of parents. Also models aggression was not standardized and also even though they attempted to match up the participants based on their level of aggression, it was based on the observations by teachers and parents, and therefore it might have been biased. Also there is a problem with demand characteristics as children might have behaved this way in order to please the experimenter.

Helena and it remained so even after 5 years of exposure to violent television.

Limitations of the theory

Social Learning Theory helps to explain why behaviours may be passed down in a family within a culture and also why some children acquire behaviours without trial and error learning. However, though it has been learned, it is not always demonstrated or not exhibited for quite some time. Because of this gap, it is difficult to establish that the behaviour is the result of observing the model. This theory doesnt also explain why some people never learn behaviour even though the above criteria have been met. This is seen as criticism of this theory

Summary
Social Learning Theory is derived from works of Albert Bandura and focuses on learning within social context, meaning that people learn from one another by observation, imitation and modelling of their behaviour, emotions and attitudes.

Does violence lead to aggression?

According to Social Learning Theory, there is a chance that violence on television will lead to more aggressive children. Another study to support this theory was carried out in Canada by Kimball and Zabrack in 1986. They have found that children became significantly more aggressive two years after television was introduced to their town. But this does not explain everything, as the children who watched violent television couldve been exposed to violence at home where their families used violent behaviour. There is strong evidence that television is not always a negative influence, because educational childrens shows help children learn positive behaviours.

Charlton et al. (2000)

Aim: as television was introduced only in 1995 on the island of St Helena, Charlton et al. used this opportunity to investigate the effects of television on childrens behaviour. Method: they set up cameras on playgrounds and observed childrens behaviour before and after the introduction of television on the island. All children were exposed to exactly the same amount of violence. Results: after analysing hours of videotape, backing everything up with interviews from teachers, parents, there was no increase in antisocial behaviour among the children of St