Describe and evaluate the social learning theory. Refer to evidence in your answer. The social learning theory believes the our behaviour is learnt through our environmement, and that it is the people around us that teach us our behaviour. Social learning theorist believe that behaviour is learnt in steps and that factors including reinforcement, motivation as well as mediating cognitive factors, effect whether the behaviour is repeated or not. Firstly, the child observes a model displaying a certain behaviour.
Bandura’s Social Learning Theory suggests that acts of aggression are learnt through the observation of role models. His original “Bobo Doll” study showed that when exposed to aggressive behaviour small children copied this behaviour, not just by being physically aggressive but even copying the verbally aggressive behaviour. However this study focuses on children who are supposed to learn in this manner, this doesn’t demonstrate that this would also be true in older children or adults who already have a set moral compass that would interfere with copying aggressive behaviours. However Bandura’s later study showed that if children saw someone get punished for aggressive behaviour they were less likely to be aggressive themselves when they were allowed to play with the bobo doll but if they saw someone get rewarded for this aggressive behaviour then they were much more likely to act aggressively themselves, this shows that vicarious reinforcement is important to the learning of aggression through the social learning theory, as receiving direct positive reinforcement leads to people having high self efficacy making them very likely to repeat the aggressive behaviour that they were rewarded for. In terms of aggression this reward could come in many forms such as acceptance from a violent gang they want to be a part of or just attention from a parent or teacher.
Commercials are about promoting and selling to one kind of audience, children. Their product must be appealing and often lie about the product but it gets it sold and children continue to want them. Article 4 (miller) Qualitative Differences among Gender Stereotyped Toys: Implications for Cognitive and Social Development in Girls and Boys According to what the article stated it was suggested that the early play experiences of girls and boys may contribute to gender differences in cognitive and social development, empirical support for this hypothesis is limited. (Miller, 1987) Such as girls or boys knowing the gender differences of toys and classifying them in a
Outline one Social Psychological Theory of Aggression Aggression is the intent to harm someone through verbal or physical actions. Bandura was the founder of Social Learning Theory (SLT) which suggests that children learn aggressive behaviour by observing other’s acting aggressively. They learn through either direct reinforcement, where the individual themselves are rewarded or punished for their own behaviour, or through watching others being rewarded or punished for their aggressive acts, (vicarious reinforcement). As a result, aggressive behaviour may repeat if a child receives a reward or witnesses a role model getting positively reinforced after committing an aggressive act and consequently imitates this behaviour to also seek the reward. SLT is supported by Bandura et al (1963), who found that children who observed an adult role model behaving aggressively towards a Bobo doll were more likely to reproduce these behaviours when later allowed to interact with the doll alone, children even improvised their own violent methods towards the doll.
Hypotheses: This study has four hypotheses: 1) Children who see an aggressive act will imitate it. The aggressive act won’t be seen in children who haven’t observed aggressive role models. 2) Children will imitate same-sex models more than opposite-sex models. 3) Observing an aggressive model will cause an increase in general aggressive behaviour whereas observing a non-aggressive model (or no model) will inhibit aggressive behaviour. 4) Boys will imitate aggression more than girls.
Sure enough, the children who had seen aggressive models reciprocated their violent behaviour with physical and verbal aggression to the doll. This occurred significantly more in the aggressive model group than in any other group; therefore, observing aggression clearly changed the children's behaviour, providing strong evidence for the existence of observational learning and its effect on behaviour. Bandura also found
Blakemore further states that gender-specific toys can lead to children acquiring undesirable attribute when they grow up. Giving girls toys that are based on attractiveness may end up endorsing a message to the child that the most important aspect is to be good-looking. On the other hand, assigning boys toys that relate to aggression only may end up ruining the character of the child.
I also noticed that the child development of the toys are more physical. They have to move the toys around to make them work therefore, they would have physically move them around with their hands and arms to get them to work. However, while looking at the girls section of the toys; not only was it a bigger selection but the coloring on the boxes were more vibrant with pinks, purples, reds, and blues. The girl’s toys made noises and lit up they are more appealing to children than the boys toys were. “Young children are often confused about sexual differences,” (Berger 221) with toys the way that they are packaged now it is not too surprising.
Mental representation enables children to rely on memory, perception and repetition in order to solve problems. Through mental representation children associate symbols and objects with other forms of information that is related. Toddlers are interested in playing “make believe”, often imitating others or imagining they are somewhere else using associations with objects or symbols. Piaget’s believes that children develop in a stage like process, others believe developmental flows. There are some infants that are capable in surpassing stages well before Piaget’s
Praise and Punishment: The Effects on Children -Jessica Broome We cannot teach children how to be successful adults by simply finding ways to make them obedient. When children do what they are told simply because they will either be rewarded or punished, they are being “obedient”. We want children to practice good behavior even when we are not there to offer a reward or dole out a punishment. As suggested by “insufficient punishment”, children will only change their behavior temporarily when the punishment is severe. This is also true of rewards.