Social Learning Theory

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SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY
Social Learning: We learn aggression through observation and imitation.
Aggression in humans is a result of direct experience or by observing
others (Bandura, 1965):
- Learning by Experience: If a child is not punished for bad behaviour
then the behaviour is reinforced (operant conditioning)
- Observational Learning: Children are likely to imitate behaviour of a
role model through indirect conditioning. If a role model is
illustrating anti-social behaviour and is not punished then this
behaviour is reinforced in the observing child (vicarious learning)…read more

MENTAL REPRESENTATIONS
· Bandura said that in order for Social Learning to occur, the child
must have mental representations of events in their social
environment.
· The child must also represent possible rewards and
punishments for their aggressive behaviour in terms of
expectancies of future outcomes
· When appropriate opportunities arise in the future, the child
will display the learning behaviour as long as the expectation
of reward is greater than the punishment
· Huesmann calls this "mental scripts"…read more

PRODUCTION OF BEHAVIOUR
Direct Maintenance:
Behaviour is maintained through direct experiences for example
if someone is mean to you, you will repeat the behaviour
Self-Efficacy:
Production of behaviour through self-efficacy which is the
confidence of our ability of success in our actions. Therefore
children who have been unsuccessful in the past with
aggression actions e.g. have not been very good therefore have
less confidence, they may resolve conflicts using other
methods.…read more

RESEARCH ­ BANDURA'S BOBO DOLL
STUDY
· Bandura had three groups of children that watched a film of an adult
aggressively beating a bobo dolls.
· After watching the film the children were left to play with the bobo dolls, they
imitated the same acts of aggression.
Variation of study
· In Condition 1, the role model was punished for aggressive behaviour. In
Condition 2, the model was neither punished or rewarded and in Condition 3,
the model was rewarded for aggressive behaviour
· In Condition 2 and 3, the children displayed aggressive behaviour whereas in
condition 1, they displayed the least aggressive behaviour
The children in condition 2 and 3 had clearly learnt aggression via observation.…read more

EVALUATION OF BANDURA
· Demand characteristics: The children already knew what they were meant to
do as one child was reported as saying "that's the doll we're meant to hit".
· Validity: hitting a doll is less serious than hitting a real person and the purpose
of Bobo dolls are that they are meant to be hit. To make it valid, in a variation of
the study, a woman was shown hitting a live clown and the children repeated
the same behaviours = supports SLT.
· Ethical Issues: Aggression was induced and taught to children. Exposure to an
adult stranger's aggression may have been frightening for the children…read more