Observational learning and social learning theory: WACE Year 12 Psychology Unit 3

What this dot point is asking

Bandura is the named theorist in Unit 3, so you need the features of the theory, its strengths and limitations, and an application to a real-world context. The Bobo doll experiment is a designated study, so you also need its aim, method, findings, contribution and limitations.

Social learning theory (Bandura, 1977)

Albert Bandura agreed with behaviourists that reinforcement matters, but argued that people also learn by watching others, without performing the behaviour or being reinforced themselves at the time. What is learned is stored as a mental representation, and whether it is performed depends on what the learner expects to happen. This makes social learning theory a bridge between behaviourist and cognitive psychology.

The five processes of observational learning

1. Attention: the learner must notice the model's behaviour. Attention is greater when the model is admired, similar to the learner, high in status or rewarded, and when the behaviour is distinctive.
2. Retention: the learner must store the behaviour in memory, as images or verbal descriptions, so it can be recalled later.
3. Reproduction: the learner must be physically and mentally able to perform the behaviour; practice improves it.
4. Motivation: the learner must want to perform the behaviour, which depends on the consequences they expect.
5. Reinforcement: consequences, whether direct (the learner is rewarded), vicarious (the model is seen being rewarded) or self-reinforcement (personal satisfaction), make the behaviour more likely to be repeated.

Modelling and vicarious reinforcement

Modelling is the process of learning by observing and imitating a model, who can be a live person, someone on a screen, or a character in a story. Vicarious reinforcement occurs when the learner sees a model rewarded for a behaviour and becomes more likely to imitate it; seeing a model punished (vicarious punishment) makes imitation less likely. This explains the difference between learning a behaviour and performing it: a child may learn a behaviour by watching but only perform it if they expect a reward.

Designated study: 'Bobo doll' experiment (Bandura, Ross and Ross, 1961)

Aim. To find out whether children would imitate aggression they had watched an adult model perform, in a new setting without the model present, and whether the sex of the model affected imitation.

Method.

• Participants: 72 children (36 boys, 36 girls) aged 37 to 69 months (mean about 52 months) from the Stanford University nursery school.
• Matching: children were rated on existing aggression and matched across groups.
• Conditions: aggressive model (the adult punched, kicked, hit with a mallet and shouted at a 5-foot inflatable Bobo doll, for example "Sock him in the nose"), non-aggressive model (the adult played quietly with other toys), and a control group with no model. Children saw either a same-sex or an opposite-sex model. The model phase lasted about 10 minutes.
• Mild frustration: each child was then shown attractive toys and told they were being saved for other children.
• Test: each child spent 20 minutes in a room with a 3-foot Bobo doll, a mallet and non-aggressive toys, observed through a one-way mirror and scored every 5 seconds.

Key findings.

• Children who watched the aggressive model reproduced many of the model's specific physical and verbal aggressive acts; children in the other groups rarely did.
• Watching the non-aggressive model tended to inhibit aggression, with these children showing less aggression than the control group on some measures.
• Boys imitated more physical aggression than girls, and same-sex modelling effects were strongest for behaviour seen as typical of their sex, especially boys copying a male model.

Contribution. It provided controlled evidence that behaviour, including aggression, can be learned through observation alone, without direct reinforcement, and it became a foundation of social learning theory and of debate about children's exposure to violence in media.

Limitations.

• Ecological validity: a laboratory with a doll designed to be hit is unlike real-life aggression towards people.
• Short-term measure: behaviour was measured only immediately afterwards.
• Generalisability: the sample was young children from one university nursery school.
• Ethics: children were exposed to aggressive models and deliberately frustrated, which raises questions of protection from harm.

Strengths and limitations of the theory

Strengths. It explains learning without direct reinforcement, it accounts for the influence of role models and media, it includes thinking as well as behaviour, and it is supported by controlled experiments.

Limitations. It gives less weight to biological factors, the processes are hard to measure directly, and much of the evidence comes from short laboratory studies with children.