Albert Bandera

Albert Bandura has made great contributions to the field of learning and cognition. His finding formed the foundation of modern social learning theory. Bandura studies were base on observational learning or modeling (2013). He believed that people learn by observing others, such behaviors, but not necessary by imitating or mimicking (2013) For example if you see a friend slipping on the wet floor, you would go around to prevent from slipping like your friend.

Observing behavior is a form of information a person obtains, a process of learning to later recover when need it. It incorporates the basic principles of learning like attention, memory and motivation. Albert Bandura Bobo Doll experiment set principles on social learning. Through this experiment he observed 33 children, boys and girls. These children were then divided into 3 groups, each group watch a different ending of the video. The video was of a woman beating a Bobo Doll; she beat up the doll, threw it across the room, kicked it, and called it names.

She was very aggressive towards the doll for no apparent reason. The first group watched a video that showed the person beating the doll receiving a reward after the behavior. Second group watched the person being punished for the behavior, and the third group watched the video with no consequences (2013). After watching the video the children were presented to a bobo doll just like the one in the video. All 33 children reacted aggressively towards the doll. The aggression varied on what video each children watched.

The children that watched the person being rewarded were more aggressive; the aggression decrease with the children that watched the person being punished and aggression was neutral with those that watch the video with no consequence (2013). In conclusion to this study, Bandura explain the influence of observational learning. First is attention, in order for a person to learn he or she needs to pay attention, be focused (2013). If there is distraction the observational learning process will have a negative affect. For example a dancer learning a new step, while the dance master is howing a new step, Silvia notices her crush walk-in the dance room. Instead of paying attention to the new step, her attention is elsewhere. Second is retention, is the ability to store the information a person learns through observing, he or she obtains the information to later act on it (2013). Third, reproduction, which is the process of practicing on what the person learns from observing, likes performing the behavior. For example; after the dancer learns a new step by observing the dance master, she then practice the behavior, in this case is the new dancing step.

Last is motivation, for a person to act the behavior learned after observing he or she has to be motivated. Reinforcements and punishments are actually important role in the process of motivation. For example, lets take Silva the dancer, she makes sure to learn the right steps to the dance routine because if she does the dance master will defiantly picker her to be at the show to perform the dance. Albert Bandera social learning theory has become popular in todays society, like entertainment, education, and especially in the media such as advertising.

Bandura did not like how the media would use the observational learning theory because it was mostly used to show negative or violent behaviors that people would learn (2013). Fox example alcohol or cigarette companies use media to advertise their product. These companies use attractive models like role models that todays society look up to or are considered to be “cool”. Society watches these advertisements, they become amuse some act the behaviors, such as smoking or drinking because they think is the “cool” thing to do especially the youth.

brought great contribution to the psychology field, observational learning or modeling has very concepts process, but if you think about it is really just common sense. Observational learning or modeling would be use more for children because they have not yet developed right from wrong (2013). Is also away that a parent or just any adult can know how to act a certain way around children, because a child behavior always reflects his or her parent or role model.