Nowadays, parents in Hong Kong worried about their children suffering from “Little Prince or Princess Syndrome”. In fact, a lot of news reported that children have different problems. For example, they do not respect their parents; ordering their eldership. But why this phenomenon happens? I would like to explain and analysis the symptoms by using observational learning theory. I would also like to give some advice the parents in preventing children act like “Little Prince”.
According to a classic demonstration of human observational learning occurred in the laboratory of Albert Bandura. He conducted a famous experiment called the “BoBo doll experiment”. After watching the adult models punching, hitting, and kicking a large plastic BoBo doll, children in the experiment later showed a greater frequency of the same behavior than did children in control conditions who had not observed the aggressive models. By the observational learning theory, we can know children may learn efficiently from model. The importance is there may be many possible models in the world. The process of social learning modeling and gave four conditions required for a person to successfully model the behavior of someone else (Bandura, 1977). Parents may develop these four conditions to attract children to imitate the behavior.
Paying attention to the model and the individual notices something in the environment is the first step. Observational learning researches those similarities between features and traits of the model and the observer. For example, children maybe won’t be attracted by the same age group of kids, but if the role model is their parents, adults or elder child, it may draw the children’s attention easily. Also, the model is perceived positively liked and respected, which may be more efficient to the observer to learn the behavior from the model. By this study, parents can