Social Learning Theory Of Behavior-Operant Conditioning

896 Words2 Pages

Social learning theory, believes that the social environment is the way we acquire behaviour. Behaviours is both acquired and maintained by the principles of operant conditioning. Social learning theory suggests that while in a social environment this is where the cognitive process that takes place and can occur through observation or direct instruction. In addition, with this, learning also occurs through the observation of rewards and punishments, a process known as vicarious reinforcement, this is where a reinforcement is received indirectly by observing another person who is being reinforced, this was developed by B. F. Skinner, who called the use of reinforcement to strengthen behaviour operant conditioning. Traditional behaviour theories …show more content…

Many studies have found that other aspects contribute to the link between being sexually abused and exhibiting sexually abusive behaviours in adolescence. These include victimization, which is the relationship between the perpetrator and the victim. It is believed that the younger the child is, the more violent and intrusive the sexual acts will be, and if the number of perpetrators increases, it is then more likely that the sexually irregular behaviour will develop in the victims. All of this suggests that the experience of sexual abuse during childhood has an impact on the development of sexually abusive behaviour patterns, but exactly how the abuse is modelled and manifested is still somewhat …show more content…

The cognitive process allows observational learning within children, and with this children learn through observing the people around them. This was illustrated in Bandura’s (1961) ‘Bobo Doll’ experiment, Bandura experimented through children’s behaviour after witnessing a adult model act violently towards the Bobo doll. The most notable experiment measured the children’s behaviour after seeing the model either get rewarded, receive a punishment, or experience no consequence for their actions of beating up the Bobo doll. These experiments were first hand approaches to test Bandura’s social learning theory. The social learning theory suggests that people don’t only learn by observing, imitating, and modelling, the behaviour they perceive, it also suggests that people also learn through being rewarded or punished, this being known as ‘behaviourism’, but they also can learn from watching somebody else being rewarded or punished for the behaviour exhibited, this being known as ‘observational learning’. The results of the Bobo doll experiment found that the children exposed to the aggressive models were more likely to act in a physically aggressive way, compared to those who were not exposed to the aggressive model. The results also concern gender differences, which strongly supported Bandura’s prediction that children are

More about Social Learning Theory Of Behavior-Operant Conditioning

Open Document