Bandura, social learning and media modelling

Overview

Recall questions on Bandura's social learning theory, observational learning and its four processes, vicarious reinforcement, the Bobo doll study and its criticisms, direct and socially mediated pathways of influence, and copycat violence.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What does Bandura argue that media can do to those who consume them?

   Model answer

   He argues that media can influence people directly, so that human values, judgement and conduct are altered by the behaviour media model for them.

2. 2

   What is observational learning?

   Model answer

   Observational learning is acquiring a behaviour by watching someone else perform it, without needing to perform it or be rewarded for it oneself.

3. 3

   Name the four processes involved in learning a behaviour by observation.

   Model answer

   Attention, retention, reproduction and motivation.

4. 4

   What is vicarious reinforcement?

   Model answer

   Vicarious reinforcement is the effect of seeing a model rewarded or punished, which makes an observer more or less likely to copy the behaviour even though nothing has happened to them.

5. 5

   Describe the Bobo doll study.

   Model answer

   Children observed an adult behaving aggressively towards an inflatable doll and were later left alone with it, and those who had seen the aggressive model imitated its behaviour far more than children who had not.

6. 6

   What did the imitation in the Bobo doll study suggest about what had been learned?

   Model answer

   Children reproduced the specific actions and phrases they had seen rather than simply becoming excitable, which suggests that a particular behaviour had been learned and not just a general state of arousal.

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