Milgram's Theory Of Social Learning Theory

Social learning theory can be used to describe why people take goods which are washed upon shore, because if they have observed a person of a similar age or gender to themselves. According to Bandura et al, people are more likely to imitate and copy the behaviour of those which they view as role models as they aspire to be like them. The observed behaviour of people stealing goods that have washed up on the shore will encourage people to imitate this behaviour due to the scavengers being rewarded for their behaviour, because of the cargo which they have gained and can now claim as their own property. The chance that the scavengers will be caught stealing the cargo is comparatively low in contrast to the gain of goods, so consequently this could

Milgram found that people would go to extremes of irrational behaviour when ordered to do so by an authority figure who told them to do so. In his original study he found that 65% of ppts would carry on to the give the full 450 volt electric shock when ordered to do so by the authority figure. However Milgram’s study is hard to generalise because he only used white males in his study so we cannot generalise this findings to different ethnicities or different genders because they may behave differently to those in the Milgram experiment. Milgram’s agency theory can also explain such behaviour because they could be in the agentic state. Perhaps, the people who are stealing such goods suffer from moral strain, because they may realise that what they are doing is wrong but won’t stop such behaviour because they are in the agentic state and consequently carrying out the wishes of an authority

These explanations range from impulsive behaviour due to the Id or simply by following the order to steal the shipwrecked goods by an authority figure who has given the order to do so. However, most of the supporting evidence to these explanations have their weakness for example social learning theory, a theory based on the study Bandura et al was carried out in an artificial lab setting, so it has a low ecological validity and consequently we cannot be certain whether this findings would be relevant in an everyday setting. There are also personal reasons as to why someone may steal shipwrecked goods. Consequently, there a various explanations as to why someone would take shipwrecked goods with one of these being that the goods are no longer the property of anyone else and therefore they can be claimed by an individual as their