Social Learning Theory

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  • Created by: Bham369
  • Created on: 13-11-17 13:40

Definition

All behaviour is learnt from the environment and those around us

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Effects of individuals on behaviour

  • Learnt behaviour and most likely to imitate the behaviour from a person you see as a role model.
    •  If the role model is punished for a behaviour, then it decreases the likelihood of the individual repeating the behaviour e.g. a child in nursery throws a toy, this is seen by a friend, and is told off. The friend is less likely to throw a toy to avoid the punishment of being told off
    • When a role model is praised/rewarded the probability of the individual duplicating the behaviour is increased e.g. a child sees a nurse praised for helping someone. The child is then more likely to go and try to help others in order to be praised. 
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Effects of individuals on behaviour

  • Things that may affect who your role model is are:
    • Gender
    • Competence
    • Status
    • Fame
    • Prestige
    • How much you are able to empathise with them 
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Effects of a group on an individual

An example of conformity in a group is Asch’s study in 1951 and 1955

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Asch 1951 and 1955

  • A participant was grouped with 6 confederates and were told they were being tested on visual perception
  • It was explained to them that they would be shown a line and they had to say whether it matched line A, B or C. 
  • They were seated in the shape of a horseshoe and the participant was asked second to last
  • The first participant answered which line most matched the one shown. Then the next etc. until the end
  • This was done 18 times, with confederates giving the wrong answer at least 12 times
  • Out of 123 participants 28% gave an answer more than 8 time
  • The experiment that showed that when in a group a person is more likely to change the way they behave to “fit in” 
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Effects on culture and society on behaviour

  • Definition of culture: Shared values, norms, customs/practices and/or language of a group e.g. whether you use a knife and fork to eat or your hands 
  • In order to understand a person, you should learn about their culture and beliefs
  • In 1970 Watson conducted an observational experiment to see how eye contact was perceived in different cultures. 
  • He found that high degrees of eye contact in African and East Asian cultures was seen as rude and disobedient 
  • Whereas in Indian and Latin-American cultures this was highly desirable
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Individualism and Collectivism

  • Individualism is to be independent by habit and in control of your own thoughts and feelings e.g. in English culture a person is encouraged to celebrate the fact that they are gay 
  • Collectivism is to put the thoughts and feelings others e.g. the rest of the family above your own needs e.g. in China if you are gay you are expected to marry a woman and keep it quiet 
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Self-fulfilling Prophecy

  • Definition: If it is assumed that you will do/become something and you believe that it will happen then it will e.g. if people say that you are going to become addicted to drugs because you are from a certain area and you do then it is a self-fulfilling prophecy
  • If we think that we are worth something and pleasant we will create a favourable impression of ourselves as we will be polite and likeable 
  • However, if we believe that the world is against us and we are angry then it is more likely that we will behave in a confrontational way which will mean that those we meet will be argumentative back confirming your views of the world thinking that you are unlikeable 
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Role Theory

  • Similar to the self-fulfilling prophecy 
  • Definition: You act out the role you think is expected of you from society e.g. you would expect a nurse to be warm, competent and level headed. Whereas, you would expect a doctor to be level-headed and competent but not necessarily warm.
  • Dependant on who is in our company, our role within society will change e.g. a nurse would not behave in the same way with her partner or children as she would in a hospital setting
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Albert Bandura

  • The theory argues that what we do/become is due to the people in our environment that are around us
  • However, Bandura created a theory that says, we can also learn from external environments e.g. the media by observation
  • The person we learn the behaviour from is the role model. As we like the way that they behave we imitate them in the hope that we too will be rewarded. However, if the role model is punished for a behaviour then we are less likely to imitate them as we will want to avoid punishment. 
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Evaluation: Positives

  • Takes both nature and nurture into account. 
    • This is important as it helps to explain how you learn through both the environment and mental processes 
  • Explains how children from people around them as well as through the media
    • This helps to explain how “social norms” come around and are transmitted 
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Evaluation: Negatives

  • Doesn’t account for free will 
    • This makes it deterministic as according to the theory it is possible to instantly learn a behaviour just through watching. Simply because we see someone being rewarded or punished doesn’t mean we will/won’t immediately copy the behaviour 
  • Ungeneralizable to all ages 
    • Most research was done on children. This doesn’t mean that you can generalise the results to adults. 
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