Social Learning Theory of Albert Bandura
If you've taken an introductory course in economics, you're already familiar with the policy planner's dilemma of deciding whether to allocate limited resources for guns or for butter. The problem is usually posed to illustrate the impersonal market forces of supply and demand, profit and loss. Yet planners are people, and most individuals come to the war-or-peace decision points of life having already developed preferred responses. Northwestern psychologist Donald Campbell calls these tendencies "acquired behavioral dispositions," and he suggests six ways that we learn to choose one option over another.
1. Trial-and-error experience is a hands-on exploration that might lead to tasting the butter and squeezing the trigger, or perhaps the other way around.
2. Perception of the object is a firsthand chance to look, admire, but don't touch a pistol and a pound of butter at close range.
3. Observation of another's response to the object is hearing a contented sigh when someone points the gun or spreads the butter on toast. It is also seeing critical frowns on faces of people who bypass the items in a store.
4. Modeling is watching someone fire the gun or melt the butter to put it on popcorn.
5. Exhortation is the National Rifle Association's plea to protect the right to bear arms or Willard Scott's commercial message urging us to use real butter.
6. Instruction about the object is a verbal description of the gun's effective range or of the number of calories in a pat of butter.
Campbell claims that direct trial-and-error experience creates a deep and long-lasting acquired behavioral disposition, while perception has somewhat less effect, observation of response even less, and modeling less still. Exhortation is one of the most used but least effective means to influence attitudes or actions.
Stanford psychologist Albert Bandura agrees that conversation is not an effective way of altering human behavior, but he thinks that classical learning theory's preoccupation with trial-and-error learning is shortsighted. "Coping with the demands of everyday life would be exceedingly trying if one could arrive at solutions to problems only by actually performing possible options and suffering the consequences."1 His social learning theory concentrates on the power of example.
THE SPREAD OF TV VIOLENCE THROUGH MODELING
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... Study of the Development of Aggression, Pergamon, New York, 1977.
Pornography: James Check and Neil Malamuth, "Pornography and Sexual Aggression: A Social Learning Theory Analysis," in Communication Yearbook 9, Margaret McLaughlin (ed.), Sage, Beverly Hills, Calif., 1986, pp. 181-213.
1. Albert Bandura, Social Learning Theory, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 1977, p. 27
2. Ibid., p. 39
3. Robert Liebert and Joyce Sprafkin, "The Surgeon General's Report," The Early Window: Effects of Television on Children and Youth, 3d ed., Pergamon, New York, 1988, pp. 79-107.
4.Bandura, p. 59.
5 Ibid., p. 27
6. Ibid., p. 166
7. "Batmania," Newsweek, June 26, 1989, p. 71.
8. Dolf Zillmann, J.L. Hoyt, and K.D. Day, "Strength and Duration of the Effect of Aggressive, Violent, and Erotic Communications on Subsequent Aggressive Behavior," Communication Research, Vol. 1, 1974, pp. 286-306.
9. Liebert and Sprafkin, pp. 75-77.
10. M. Lefkowitz, L. Eron, L. Walder, and L. Huesmann, Growing Up to Be Violent: A longitudinal Study of the Development of Aggression, Pergamon, New York, 1977.
11. See Robert B. Cialdini, Influence, 2d ed., Scott, Foresman, Glenview, Ill., 1988, pp. 135-143.
One example of the “Social Learning Theory” is the Bobo doll experiment conducted by Albert Bandura in 1961. In this experiment children were either exposed to an adult exhibiting aggressive behavior or non-aggressive behavior towards the doll. When it came time for the children to interact with the doll, the children who were exposed to aggressive behavior were more likely to exhibit aggressive behavior (Nolen, n.d.).
Hepburn, Mary A. "TV Violence! A Medium’s Effects Under Scrutiny." Social Education. Sept 1997: pp244-249. SIRS Researcher. Available <http://researcher.sirs.com/>
Farrington, D. (2007), ‘Origins of Violent Behavior over the Life Span’, in D. Flannery, A.
... Test of the General Aggression Model." Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 28.12 (2002): 1679-686. Print.
Vaillancourt, T., & Hymel, S. (2006). Aggression and social status: The moderating roles of sex and peer-valued characteristics. Aggressive Behavior, 32, 396–408. doi:10.1002/ab.20138.
Feshback, Seymour and Jolanta Zagrodzka. (1997). Aggression: Biological, Developmental, and Social Perspectives. New York: Plenum Press.
Many theories have been thought of over the years to attempt to explain why people behave the way they do. Many questions were brought up when thinking about that and the social learning theory is a popular theory in explaining this. Nobody really thought of the social learning theory too much until Albert Bandura wrote his idea of it. He actually wrote a book called “Social Learning Theory.” In this book, he states that behavior is learned from the environment through the process of observational learning(Saul McLeod).
The frequency of pornography can also influence in the reaction of a sexual offender. There is a difference between the effects of pornography on a sexual offender that is high risk, and an offender that that is low risk. An offender that is high risk is more susceptible to engage in violent sexual acts after being exposed to pornography due to their hostile personality. Also a high risk sexual offender is more prone to recidivism after watching pornographic material. Another factor that contributes to person’s sexual behavior is the influence by their overall emotional state, if they were rejected or most of the time they felt anger. Many individuals may had lived in a disrupted family where there was no support and it was mostly a conflictive environment. It is demonstrated that men with higher attraction to sexual aggression were more likely to get aroused when exposed to sexually violent. Offenders that are exposed to erotica, report that their aggression decreased, while offenders exposed to nonviolent sexual behavior and violent sexual behavior significantly increase aggression. When high risk offenders are exposed to deviant forms of pornography where the male is in power, this helps them shape their fantasies and
Bandura, A., Ross, D., & Ross, S.A. (1961). Transmission of aggression through imitation of aggressive models. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 63, 575-582.
In 1977, Psychologist Albert Bandura adopted the Social Learning Theory making it an influential and important theory. Bandura believed that direct reinforcement could not account for all types of learning capabilities. Bandura argued that individuals could learn new information and behavior by watching other individuals and the type of leanings can be explained by a wide variety of behaviors. This theory acknowledges that just because something has been learned, it does not mean that it will result in a change in behavior. However, the influence from others can cause a change in
Fagan, Patrick F. “Adolescent.” The Effects of Pornography on Individuals, Marriage, Family and Community. North Carolina Magazine.2010.
Bandura 's social learning hypothesis focuses on the significance of observational learning, impersonation and displaying.
Influence on Children Media - History of Media for Children, General Considerations, Studies of Media Influence, Domains of Influence, Recommendations http://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/2212/Media-Influence-on-Children.html#ixzz1PoYlQRnG
Sherry, John L. "The Effects of Violent Video Games on Aggression A Meta Analysis." Human Communication Research (2001): 409-431.
Anything that weakens a response is considered punishment. For example, a kid who writes on the wall in permanent magic market and then gets yelled out and put into time-out is being punished. During modeling and observation, an individual watches somebody perform a behavior and then repeats the behavior. Children learn in this way. For example, a 3-year old who has watched his mother answer the phone and then starts picks it up while it is ringing one day and says “hello” has learned by modeling and observation. In order for an individual to model somebody, they have to be paying attention, remember what they saw, and be motivated to repeat the behavior.