SOCIAL LEARNING THEORY

Social Learning Theory: Alfred Bandura

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Social Learning Theory: Alfred Bandura

Social learning theory by Albert Bandura focuses on learning that takes place within a social framework or environment. It is based on the concepts of observational learning, imitation and modeling, and considers that humans learn from each other, especially the children. They imitate behavior form the models put in front of them. Humans learn both the behavior and the outcome of behavior by observing other humans. Contrary to the behaviorists, the social learning theorists believe that learning does not bring any permanent change in the behavior of a person, since learning is conducted by observation. It believes that cognition plays a pivotal role in the learning of a person, and social learning theory has become increasingly cognitive over the past few decades. The social learning theory acts as a bridge between the behavioral learning theories and the cognitive learning theories.

The theory is based on the experiment of children with bobo dolls, plastic inflatable clown dolls that are filled with sand at the base of the doll. The children in the experiment are made to watch different video clips in which adults are seen punching the bobo dolls with positive reinforcement and punishment. After watching the video, children are left unsupervised with bobo dolls, and observed from a concealed position. The children that saw adults getting positive reinforcements and rewards for hitting the bobo dolls, act aggressively and violently with the bobo dolls, whereas children that watched adults got punished by hitting the bobo dolls refrain from aggressive and violent behavior. This experiment led to the formation of widely praised social learning theory by Alfred Bandura (Isom, 1998).

Along with modeling and imitation, the theory is also based upon the concepts of reinforcement and punishment. This is the motivational factor that plays an important role in the learning a behavior from others. If a person observes another person getting praise due to his action, it is highly likely that person will imitate the actions of the person getting praise, whereas if a person observes punishment for his actions by another person, then it is highly unlikely that the person would imitate those actions. However, the role of reinforcement and punishment is indirect and not the only reason for learning. Moreover, in order to learn from observation, the theory requires that an individual has keen observation, attention and retention, since it is through attention that an individual focuses on other individuals and environment while having keen observation is also very important in order to retain the desired behavior and learning objectives (Hart & Kritsonis, 2006).

The theory addresses that though people learn from each other through observational learning, modeling and imitation. However, when it comes to gender the people prefer imitating the models from the same-sex group rather than cross-sex group. The human is conditioned to do this even before it gains gender identity and gender constancy. However, this is more prevalent in males than in females. Females tend to be ...