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Advantages
- Research support for the prediction of SLT comes from a series of studies carried out by Bandura et al (1961). This involved children observing aggressive and non-aggressive adult models and then being tested for imitative learning in the absence of the model. Children in the aggression condition reproduced a good deal of physically and verbally aggressive behaviour while none of the children in the non-aggressive group made such remarks.
- There is support from the applicability of the SLT to adults. Phillips (1986) found that daily homicide rates in the US almost always increased in the week following a major boxing match. This suggests that viewers were imitating behaviour they watched and so social learning is evident in adults as well as children.
- Unlike operant conditioning theory, it can explain aggressive behaviour in the absence of direct reinforcement. Although Bandura et al.’s (1963) participants behaved more aggressively after observing an aggressive model, at no point were the children directly rewarded for any action, either aggressive or non-aggressive. Consequently, the concept of vicarious learning is necessary to explain these findings.
- This theory can explain differences in aggressive and non-aggressive behaviour both between and within individuals. The ‘culture of violence’ theory (Wolfgang and Ferracuti 1967) proposes that people respond differently in different situations because they have observed that aggression is rewarded in some situations and not others and so they learn behaviours that are appropriate to particular contexts.
- The SLT can be used to explain on cultural differences in aggression. For instance, among the !Kung San of the Kalahari Desert, aggression is comparatively rare. This is because there is an absence of direct reinforcement of aggressive behaviour as well as the absence of aggressive models. This means that there is little opportunity or motivation for !Kung San children to acquire behaviours.
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Disadvantages
- The theory does not tell us why a child would be motivated to perform the same behaviours in the absence of the model. In a later study, Bandura and Walters’ (1963) found that those in the no-reward no-punishment control group were somewhere in between high/low levels of aggression. Bandura called this type of learning vicarious learning – the children were learning about the likely consequences of actions and then adjusting their subsequent behaviour accordingly.
- Ethical issues make it difficult to test SLT experimentally. This is because exposing children to aggressive behaviour with the knowledge that they may reproduce it in their own behaviour raises ethical issues concerning the need to protect participants from psychological and physical harm. As a result, experimental studies such as the Bobo doll studies would no longer be allowed to take place. This means that it is difficult to test experimental hypotheses about the social learning of aggressive behaviour in children and consequently difficult to establish the scientific credibility of the theory by this means.
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