Most of us at some point in our lives have been pointed out or even mentioned the resemblance we have to our parents. This similarity highlights the premise that the origin of behaviors is not only due to biological factors, but also due to the exposure or influence of external stimuli “our environment in general” (family, friends, television programs or online content and cultures). ). The Bandura’s social learning theory explained in this Psychology Online article.
He was born in Canada, in 1925. Psychologist and writer who was influenced by reading or referring to the work Social Learning and Imitation by Miller and Dollard (1941). One of his main ideas is that conditioning theories do not completely explain the acquisition and performance of a behavior.
In the early 1950s, Bandura began a program of research into the factors that influenced or influenced social behavior.
Bandura states that observation allows people to learn without carrying out any behavior. The main idea of social theory is the assumption that People learn by observing other people’s behaviorIn this sense, Bandura differs from Skinner who maintained that behavior through one’s own experience is the basic element of psychology. Here you can read.
It also states that reinforcement is not essential for learning, although reinforcement facilitates learning, it states that it is not a necessary condition for it.
Albert Bandura, supporter of a social-cognitive approach, argues human behavior in interaction between the subject and his environment.
This author exposes learning by observation, in which each of us has a repertoire of people we take as reference in different areas of our lives (parents, teachers, public figures, friends). In this approach a model is chosen; Afterwards we move on to observation and finally we memorize and observe whether it will help us to imitate or not.
Observation and a model are not enough for the behavior to take place; The model must be attractive and of interest to the person modeled. This occurs thanks to the ability to see ourselves in the behaviors of others.
The 4 steps in the Bandura theory modeling process
- Attention: the attention of the modeler or learner must be focused on the model otherwise learning will be interrupted.
- Memory: the individual must retain what is observed and then execute it.
- Reproduction: the behavior is started and the person must be able to imitate that behavior, not necessarily the same but they must carry it out.
- Motivation: in this part it is necessary to know what led the person to carry out the behavior. What do you want to achieve by imitating? Maybe you want to get to the same state as your model.
Motivation is a key step or aspect when starting to learn what you want to imitate. It is essential that there are reasons or motives to want to learn something, otherwise it becomes difficult to focus attention, retain and reproduce behaviors.
Reasons for learning according to Bandura’s theory
According to Bandura, there are several reasons why we want to learn something. The different types of reasons exposed by social learning theory are shared below:
- Past reward or punishment (past reinforcement/classical behaviorism), happens when we have performed a behavior and receive something good in return. We play it again if the same reward exists.
- Promised reinforcement or punishment (incentives), expectations of what you want to achieve. They are all those possible future benefits that motivate us to want to learn.
- Reinforcement or vicarious punishment, which we observed that the model we learned from achieved. In the following article you will find the.
The negative motivations (punishments) that were mentioned may also exist and lead us not to imitate certain behavior: 1. past punishment; 2. promised punishment (threats) and 3. vicarious punishment.
This theory presented by Bandura, then teaches us that the environment in which we develop is going to enhance or weaken the development of our skills and will also depend on whether we can mobilize in different environments or social contexts by allowing more diversity of learning and developing different skills depending on the environment that we select.
The essence of observational learning is imitation; but it also involves adding and subtracting from the observed behavior and generalizing from this observation, in other words, it involves cognitive processes and does not consist of simple mimetic or repetition. It is more than just repetition or matching other people’s actions, it involves the symbolic representation of information and storing it for future scenarios.
Factors that determine learning modeled by Bandura
According to Albert Bandura, the factors that determine learning are:
- Model features: People tend to observe people of high social position more than those of low status, competent people more than unqualified people, and more those who have some power.
- The characteristics of the observer: These are the ones that influence the probability that imitation occurs. Generally, people from low social positions tend to frequently imitate behavior or even the absence of self-identification or perceiving themselves as an individual being with their own characteristics leads to the continuous repetition of models.