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  • What do you think? Can we only learn through  direct experience, or also from studying others?

  • Psychologist Albert Bandura came  up with an interesting experiment  

  • to answer that exact question and form a theory.

  • Bandura came up with the social  learning theory in the 1960s,  

  • a time dominated by scholars who  didn't believe Bandura's idea  

  • and argued that learning was always the result  of classical and operational conditioning.

  • To prove that children can  learn by mere observation,  

  • Bandura came up with the Bobo Doll  Experiments - a set of controversial studies,  

  • which involved preschool childrenadult models and a stand-up punch doll.

  • In the first set of experiments, the children were  seated alone in a corner of the room. From there  

  • they observed an adult actor aggressively kicking  and scolding the Bobo doll for about 10 minutes.

  • Afterwards, the same child was put  into a new playroom where another  

  • adult deliberately frustrated the child by  taking away the toys the child played with.

  • The frustrated child was then put back into the  room with the Bobo doll where Bandura and his  

  • team made the following 3 observations: 1. Children who initially saw the adult  

  • punching the doll, often copied the behavior. 2. Boys were three times more likely to do so

  • 3. Boys reproduced the behavior twice as oftenif they observed a man do it compared to boys  

  • who observed a female actor. Girls were  also more influenced by same-sex models.

  • To find out if movies would have the same effect,  

  • Bandura let some children watch the  model live, and others watch it on video,  

  • or as a cartoon animation. As all  three groups showed similar responses,  

  • Bandura concluded that children imitate others  regardless of where they have seen the behavior.

  • In the last variation of the experimentsBandura wanted to know if the children would  

  • act differently when the models were reinforced  or punished for their behavior towards the doll.  

  • Now, the children first  saw the actor hit the doll,  

  • and then observed another adult enter the roomThis second adult would then react to the actor.

  • These last results showed that it did not make  much of a difference to the children whether the  

  • aggressor was praised or not. However, the kids  who saw that the model was punished, displayed  

  • much less aggression later, an effect which  was especially true for girls. In other words,  

  • seeing others being rewarded does not  necessarily motivate us to copy their behavior.  

  • Seeing others being punished, on the other handcan significantly diminish our will to copy it.

  • The fact that Bandura was able to prove that  children also learn by observing others,  

  • was a breakthrough in psychologyAs a consequence of his findings,  

  • scholars and government officials argued  that we should ban violence in films and  

  • games. Others suggested that the Bobo Doll  studies are not studies of aggression,but  

  • rather show that the children are simply motivated  by the desire to please adults or act like them.

  • Bandura and his co-author  Richard Walters later defined  

  • five key tenets of the Social Learning Theory:

  • 1. Learning is a cognitive process  that takes place in a social setting

  • 2. Learning can occur by observingbehavior AND the consequences of such 

  • 3. Learning can happen without an observable  change in behavior, because we may learn  

  • without displaying what we have learned. 4. Reinforcements play a role but are  

  • not entirely responsible for learning. 5. Cognition, behavior, and environment  

  • all mutually influence each other — a  process called reciprocal determinisms.

  • Bandura, who in college attendedpsychology course only to kill time,  

  • soon became passionate about the topic and then  one of most cited psychologists in history.

  • About reality, he said: "Most of the images  of reality on which we base our actions  

  • are really based on vicarious experience."

  • What do you think? How much of your  learning comes from observing others?  

  • And if you learn socially, who  are your greatest teachers?

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What do you think? Can we only learn through  direct experience, or also from studying others?

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