Social Learning Theory

Social Learning Theory

Introduction

Social learning theory attempts to illustrate socialization and its impact on self-development. There are many other theories like functionalism, symbolic interaction theory, and psychoanalytic theory, which attempt to explain how people become socialized. Similarly, social learning theory defines the learning process of an individual, influence of society on his socializing and his self-formation. Social learning theory helps us to understand that the development of an individual's identity is a learned response to social stimuli. Instead of individual mind the theory emphasizes the societal context of socialization, as it assumes that the identity of an individual is not a result of unconscious but presenting oneself according to others' expectations. We develop our attitudes and behaviors as a reaction to encouragement and support from the people around us (www.sociology.about.com).

From the work of Watson, Pavlov and Thorndike, Clark Hull suggested a theory on behavioral learning that initiated the formation of more formal theories of social learning by Walters, N.E. Miller, Dollard and Bandura. At first the theory merged the ideas of psychoanalysis and learning theory of stimulus and response in to an extensive elaboration of human behavior. Albert Bandura rejected the idea of the blend with psychoanalytic and emphasized on the information processing and cognitive capabilities that determine social behavior. Both theories were developed to analyze the general framework to understand human behavior and its formations. The theories proved to be able to account well for current data for development as well as guide new investigations (Grusec, 1992)

Discussion

Social learning theorists believe that people are formed in basic ways through the processes of learning by their environment. They also believe that human behavior is also influenced by classical and operant conditioning. However, they added a third, observational learning, to these processes of learning. According to the theorists, people learn by noticing and observing others, in other words the whole social environment around them. With the help of observational learning theorists acknowledged that it is necessary to consider the role of external as well as internal processes to explain behavior of human.

Social learning and human behavior

Observational learning includes a variety of cognitive and behavioral procedures. To be able to understand the behavior of another, first the individual has to pay attention to what the other individual or the model is doing. Then he has to encode whatever he saw and then develop the memory of the model's behavior. Later, the memory is decoded in to a behavior so that the observer may copy and imitate it and to be able to do that successfully, the observer also has to practice it. Motivation is the major factor that drives a person to use the learned behavior and this motivation is affected by various factors, mainly if they believe that if he imitates, reinforcement will be available. Consequences of past behavior and observed consequences of the model's behavior influence the beliefs of a person. If the person sees the model reinforced for his behavior, then chances of imitation increase but if the ...