Social Learning Theory: What Is It and How Did It Come About?
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Psychologist Albert Bandura researched whether observing and imitating others affect children’s attitudes, changing the way they learn.
Psychologist Albert Bandura researched whether observing and imitating others affect children’s attitudes, changing the way they learn.
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Previously it was believed that seeing violent behaviors helped to release the tension and aggressiveness of the observer. Sigmund Freud defines this as catharsis. Albert Bandura, a Canadian-American psychologist, decided to test this Freudian theory, and in 1961, he conducted the “Bobo doll experiment.”
This experiment sought to demonstrate that exposing children to violence would make them more aggressive. The study was conducted at Stanford University, where Bandura was a professor, experimenting with preschool children who attended the college nursery. The children were divided into three groups: one where they were shown adults hitting Bobo dolls; another group saw non-aggressive behaviors and activities with the dolls, and the third did not observe any action related to these toys. The children who witnessed the aggressive acts, when in front of the dolls, began beating and throwing them. Those who did not see those violent attitudes did not do that, but rather, they played with the toys or ignored them.
A few years later, Bandura recreated the experiment, this time using television to see if it produced the same effect. One group was exposed to videos from the 1961 test where adults beat up toys, and another group was taught content without aggression. The results were the same; the children who were exposed to violent images acted aggressively against the dolls. This experiment helped demonstrate that children learn through observation, and, from this study, the social learning theory was developed.
Social learning theory
Social learning theory is based on the idea that children learn in social settings through means of observation and imitation of the behavior they see. It also reinforces the idea that the child is affected by the influence of others. It is based on three key concepts: a) that people can learn through observation, b) that the mental state affects this learning process, and c) that just because something was learned does not mean that this results in a change in a person’s behavior.
Bandura explains that it would be perilous if people learned only from their experience, as previously believed, rather than through observing others and learning from their actions. For example, if a student is cheating on an exam and the teacher punishes him, his classmates can learn that such activities are wrong by seeing the consequences of their classmate’s actions. “Fortunately, in most humans, the behavior is learned observationally through modeling: by observing others, an idea forms about how new behaviors are accomplished, and sometime later, this coded information serves as a guide for the action,” Bandura says in his book, Social Learning Theory (1977). The book focuses on three models: 1) one involving a real person acting in a certain way; 2) another with verbal instruction, which consists of describing and explaining a behavior, and 3) a symbolic model where, through books, movies, programs, or online media, real or fictional characters demonstrate certain attitudes.
These models demonstrate that learning can take place in many ways, for example, through reading or watching television. The latter one has generated a lot of debate about how much impact TV and computer or video games can have on children and young people.
Based on his research, Bandura described social learning in four principles:
Attention: To learn, one needs to be focused and pay attention. Especially for children, if they see something novel or different, they are more likely to engage.
Retention: Internalizing the information just learned and storing it as a memory.
Reproduction: Reproducing information that was previously retained and using it when needed, such as on a test.
Motivation: Without motivation, there is no interest in doing anything. Motivation can arise when one observes that another person is rewarded or blamed for doing or not doing something, which motivates the observer to want to do the same thing or avoid it.
Albert Bandura, with his Bobo dolls experiment, developed a learning model far removed from the beliefs of the time in which observing acts of violence was seen as something cathartic and made the viewer less aggressive. He showed that learning is social because it involves the community. Students learn from the behavior of their parents, teachers, and peers, not just from the topics discussed in the classrooms.
With the advancement of technology, social learning theory has generated many new studies, focusing on social media, the enjoyment of the media, or a meta-analysis on the effects of media, among many others. Recently, this theory has had a new boom because of the polemic behind social learning from videogames and the controversy about whether video games promote violence in children and young people.
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