Social Learning Theory
Social Learning Theory
Social learning theory is the theory that people learn behaviours though observation of other people and their environment. The theory is that all children are born neither good nor bad, but they are influenced throughout their lives, the development of behaviour is continuous throughout our lives, rather than stopping at a certain time.
From an early age children can get influenced, by watching how their parents behave, if their parents are violent and aggressive, and then the children are likely to imitate this behaviour. Thing such as cartoons can influence a Childs behaviour, for example Tom and Jerry is a cartoon with lots of violence in, also having no consequence, this influences children to think that violence is okay and there are no consequences to this behaviour. Another example of how a child can be influenced by a cartoon but in a positive way is Scooby-Doo when a child watches this they will see that the ‘bad guy’ always gets found and sent to prison, this shows a child that there are consequences to that sort of behaviour, so they are less likely to imitate it.
An experiment has been done to back up social learning theory; this was the Bobo doll experiment. This experiment was carried out by Bandura. In the experiment there were 36 boys and 36 girls between the ages of 3-6, they were split into 3 groups of 24. The first group watched an adult model behave aggressively to the Bobo doll, by hitting it and throwing it. The second group watched an adult model behave non-aggressively towards the Bobo doll. And the third group wasn’t exposed to any model. From observing how the first group of children behaved towards the Bobo doll was aggressive, but they did worse things to the doll then their model did. The second group played with the doll nicely like how their model did. And the third group did similar, just play nicely. This experiment shows how children are influenced by what they see, from watching an adult do something
Social learning theory is the theory that people learn behaviours though observation of other people and their environment. The theory is that all children are born neither good nor bad, but they are influenced throughout their lives, the development of behaviour is continuous throughout our lives, rather than stopping at a certain time.
From an early age children can get influenced, by watching how their parents behave, if their parents are violent and aggressive, and then the children are likely to imitate this behaviour. Thing such as cartoons can influence a Childs behaviour, for example Tom and Jerry is a cartoon with lots of violence in, also having no consequence, this influences children to think that violence is okay and there are no consequences to this behaviour. Another example of how a child can be influenced by a cartoon but in a positive way is Scooby-Doo when a child watches this they will see that the ‘bad guy’ always gets found and sent to prison, this shows a child that there are consequences to that sort of behaviour, so they are less likely to imitate it.
An experiment has been done to back up social learning theory; this was the Bobo doll experiment. This experiment was carried out by Bandura. In the experiment there were 36 boys and 36 girls between the ages of 3-6, they were split into 3 groups of 24. The first group watched an adult model behave aggressively to the Bobo doll, by hitting it and throwing it. The second group watched an adult model behave non-aggressively towards the Bobo doll. And the third group wasn’t exposed to any model. From observing how the first group of children behaved towards the Bobo doll was aggressive, but they did worse things to the doll then their model did. The second group played with the doll nicely like how their model did. And the third group did similar, just play nicely. This experiment shows how children are influenced by what they see, from watching an adult do something
Bibliography: McLeod, S. (2011). Bobo Doll Experiment. Available: http://www.simplypsychology.org/bobo-doll.html. Last accessed 19th Oct 2013