Reference For Assignment
Reference For Assignment
Reference For Assignment
Bandura formed his social cognitive theory while observing patients with snake phobias
In the model, B, or behavior, refers to things like complexity, duration, skill, etc. The E
stands forenvironment, and it's comprised of the situation, roles, models and
relationships. P, or person, is comprised mainly of cognition but also other personal
factors such as self-efficacy, motives and personality.
Here's a classroom example to help make this point more clear. In the classroom as a
teacher presents a lesson to the class, students reflect on what the teacher is saying.
This is where the environment influences cognition, a personal factor. Students who
don't understand a point raise their hands to ask a question. This is where personal
factors influence behavior. So, the teacher reviews the point (behavior influences
environment).
Bandura's most famous experiment was the 1961 Bobo Doll study. Briefly, he made a
video in which an adult woman was shown being aggressive to a Bobo doll, hitting
and shouting aggressive words.
Through the Bobo doll experiment and others, Bandura grounded his understanding of
a model's primary function, which is to transmit information to the observer. This
function occurs in any of three ways:
The Role Of
Consequences
In Learning
From Models
Although Bandura
believed that learning
is not facilitated by
The 1961 Bobo Doll Study is Banduras most famous experiment
reinforcement,
behaviors enacted by others often do either reinforce or punish. These outcomes of
the modeled behavior are referred to as vicarious because they arouse emotional
reactions in the observer. For example, a teacher acknowledges a child who shares
her crayons with others at a table, and a child who observed the situation experiences
positive feelings.
The two components of vicarious reinforcement are: the behavior of a model produces
reinforcement for a particular behavior, and second, positive emotional reactions are
aroused in the observer.
Television commercials rely on this type of situation. For example, a well-known
actress eats a particular low-calorie food and demonstrates her weight loss or a
handsome actor dressed in a tuxedo demonstrates the features of a luxury car, and
then joins other expensively dressed people entering a large house for a party.
In these situations, the vicarious reinforcement for a particular group of viewers is the
positive feelings associated with being slim or acquiring social status. Similarly,
players at slot machines, for example, see and hear the other players winning. The
loud noises and flashing lights announce the winner to others. Also, advertisements of
contests often include pictures of previous winners. These pictures may elicit positive
emotional reactions in readers.
Unlike Skinner, Bandura (1977) believes that humans are
active information processors and think about the relationship between
their behavior and its consequences. Observational learning could not
occur unless cognitive processes were at work.
Children observe the people around them behaving in various ways. This is
illustrated during the famous bobo doll experiment (Bandura, 1961).
Individuals that are observed are called models. In society children are
surrounded by many influential models, such as parents within the family,
characters on children’s TV, friends within their peer group and teachers at
school. Theses models provide examples of behavior to observe and
imitate, e.g. masculine and feminine, pro and anti-social etc.
Children pay attention to some of these people (models) and encode their
behavior. At a later time they may imitate (i.e. copy) the behavior they
have observed. They may do this regardless of whether the behavior is
‘gender appropriate’ or not but there are a number of processes that make
it more likely that a child will reproduce the behavior that its society deems
appropriate for its sex.
First, the child is more likely to attend to and imitate those people it
perceives as similar to itself. Consequently, it is more likely to imitate
behavior modeled by people of the same sex.
Second, the people around the child will respond to the behavior it imitates
with either reinforcement or punishment. If a child imitates a model’s
behavior and the consequences are rewarding, the child is likely to
continue performing the behavior. If parent sees a little girl consoling her
teddy bear and says “what a kind girl you are”, this is rewarding for the
child and makes it more likely that she will repeat the behavior. Her
behavior has been reinforced (i.e. strengthened).
Identification occurs with another person (the model) and involves taking on
(or adopting) observed behaviors, values, beliefs and attitudes of the
person with whom you are identifying.