PSY/390 Learning and Cognition
University of Phoenix
May 1, 2013
Dr. Tekesia Jackson
Albert Bandura has made great contributions to the field of learning and cognition. His finding formed the foundation of modern social learning theory. Bandura studies were base on observational learning or modeling (2013). He believed that people learn by observing others, such behaviors, but not necessary by imitating or mimicking (2013) For example if you see a friend slipping on the wet floor, you would go around to prevent from slipping like your friend. Observing behavior is a form of information a person obtains, a process of learning to later recover when need it. It incorporates the basic principles of learning like attention, memory and motivation.
Albert Bandura Bobo Doll experiment set principles on social learning. Through this experiment he observed 33 children, boys and girls. These children were then divided into 3 groups, each group watch a different ending of the video. The video was of a woman beating a Bobo Doll; she beat up the doll, threw it across the room, kicked it, and called it names. She was very aggressive towards the doll for no apparent reason. The first group watched a video that showed the person beating the doll receiving a reward after the behavior. Second group watched the person being punished for the behavior, and the third group watched the video with no consequences (2013).
After watching the video the children were presented to a bobo doll just like the one in the video. All 33 children reacted aggressively towards the doll. The aggression varied on what video each children watched. The children that watched the person being rewarded were more aggressive; the aggression decrease with the children that watched the person being punished and aggression was neutral with those that watch the video with no consequence (2013).
In conclusion to this study, Bandura explain the influence of observational