The Social Learning Theory Approach

The Social Learning Theory Approach can be defined as learning behaviour from observing other people and how they are reinforced. This approach represents a shift from radical behaviourism as conditioning can’t account for all learning. The mental and cognitive processes play an important role in the Social Learning Theory as it is based on storing the behaviour along with the positive reinforcement we have seen in our memory and learning to do the behaviour this way, expecting the same reinforcement when we do it ourselves. This can explain how advertisements on television can persuade us to buy a product as they usually include someone buying the product and being positively reinforced and we store what we have seen in the back of our mind and when we see the product, our mind tells us to buy it remembering the advertisement and believing we can be reinforced in the same way. Although we tend to only perform a behaviour which we know will be reinforced positively, but as we store this behaviour and information in our memory, it does not have to be performed for a long time. This Approach is quite different to behaviourism as behaviourism suggests we learn behaviour as a consequence of our own actions, although this approach suggests we learn behaviour from observing other people perform the act and being positively reinforced. If we see a behaviour that is negatively reinforced, we are less likely to learn and perform it. The Social Learning Theory Approach can also be described as a mediating cognitive factor and must contain three main things; a stimulus (seeing someone else being praised for an action), an organism (ourselves and how we then think can we do the same action and be praised), and a response (where we carry out the action, expecting positive reinforcement), whereas the behaviourism theory only needs a stimulus and a response. There are four main assumptions of the Social Learning Theory Approach; Role of observation, the role of mental