Mary Bandura's Social Learning Theory

This paper will discuss the case of Mary and how social learning theory is relevant to her case. Mary has come from a dysfunctional household where she has been subjected to both physical and sexual abuse. As a result of the abuse, Mary has run away from home and is living in a squat with other homeless youths. Mary has started to drink regularly, experiment with drugs and engage in prostitution. There are many influential factors surrounding children as they progress through the different stages of development, such as their parents, their family life within the home, friends within their peer groups, school teachers and even characters observed on television. All of these factors provide examples of behaviour, both positive and negative that are observed, modelled and potentially imitated. In Mary’s case, her family life within the home was dysfunctional, with aggressive behaviour, violence and abuse occurring regularly. These behaviours have been observed by Mary and she has taken that knowledge with her as she has progressed through her developmental years. Behaviours exhibited
Social learning theory posits that criminal behaviour is not biological, rather it is behaviour that is learned as an individual navigates through their environment (Cullen & Wilcox, 2010). The theoretical assumption of Bandura’s social learning theory is that an individual’s behaviour is the result of a three-way interaction between internal factors, the external environment and the behavioural response to stimuli (Cullen & Wilcox, 2010). Social learning theory also suggests that behaviour is learned from three modelling sources: direct sources, such as family, friends and peers; community sources, the location of an individual’s residence and status of the neighbourhood; and media sources, such as television, internet and general media (Bandura,