BANDURA'S SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY

Bandura's Social Learning Theory



Bandura's Social Learning Theory

Introduction

The Social Learning Theory of Bandura emphasises the importance of observing and modelling the behaviours, attitudes and emotional reactions of others. The Social Learning Theory puts in plain words that human behaviour in terms of incessant reciprocal communication between environmental influences, cognitive, behavioural, recommending that behaviour can be learned at the cognitive stage through observing other individual's actions. (Wertsch, & Sohmer, 2005)This suggests that people are able of imagining themselves in comparable circumstances, and of bringing upon yourself similar outcomes. Once the behaviour is learned it may be reinforced or punished by the consequences it generates. Bandura subscribed to several of the essential concepts of the Operant Conditioning Theory: reinforcement, punishment, and motivation.

Discussion

Bandura also believed that there was another aspect to motivation, he called it self-reinforcement. (Crawford, 2006)Self-reinforcement refers to ones' sense of pride, or as meeting of standards in ones' own behaviour. (Crawford, 2006) some individual's belief that they are criminal is reinforced while in these juvenile institutions. They are happy to be a part of this group of criminals and they continued to act criminally to some degree in order to remain a part of the group and as to maintain a sense of pride and social identity.

A study in which young children were shown adults interacting with a character called "Bobo Doll" was conducted in order to prove that observation is a primary form of learning. In one film, the adults attacked Bobo, and in another they were friendly to it. One group of children were shown one film another group shown the other.

The adults attacked Bobo in a distinctive manner, they used a hammer as a weapon in some instances and in others threw the doll in the air and shouted "Pow, Boom!". As a result of this violent version of the film, the researchers claimed that if the children repeated such behaviour, they learnt it rather than it being acted out spontaneously (Wertsch, & Sohmer, 2005).

Later in 1965, Bandura carried out the same experiment, but showed the adults who behaved aggressively either being punished or rewarded for their actions. Those children, who had seen the adults rewarded, and those who had seen the adult neither rewarded nor punished, behaved more aggressively than those who had seen the adults receive a form of punishment. This suggests that the children who had seen the adults being punished simply could not remember how the adults had behaved (Crawford, 2006). However, when Bandura rewarded all of the children for imitating the behaviour of the adults, this was shown not to be the case. Thus, all three groups of children had comparable levels of observational learning, but those who had seen the adults punished did not emulate the behaviour.

The prevalent factor that is stressed in Bandura's theory is that observation is the process of attention. He states that the individual notices something in the environment (retention), the individual remembers what was noticed (reproduction), the individual produces an action that ...