Bandura: Social Learning Theory

Bandura was a Canadian psychologist whose work took place in the 1960s and 70s. What intrigues me about Bandura’s theory is that it incorporates cognitive, behavioral and environmental factors; it doesn't exclude these factors but takes into consideration all of them and how they affect learning and development. This seems to make the most sense and to show the most complete picture of human development.

Bandura came up with the idea of reciprocal determinism where “the world and a person’s behavior cause each other.” In other words, an angry teenager is not just shaped by her environment; her environment is also shaped by her.

Bandura focuses on attention, memory and motivation of a learner and went beyond positive reinforcement (reward systems) to also look at negative reinforcement and punishment to modify behavior.

He is most famous for his Bobo doll experiments (which can be found here. Through these experiments he demonstrated how children learn by observation of others (the model) and then mimicking the behavior of those they see. He came up with Modeling Therapy where one learns to respond differently to a situation by watching a model. For example, if you have a fear of snakes, Modeling Therapy could be used by having you observe another person approach a snake, they would act fearful, but then they would take self-control and remain calm. The theory goes that you would then learn that appropriate, more health response to snakes.

References:

McLeod, S. A. (2011). Bandura - Social Learning Theory. Retrieved from http://www.simplypsychology.org/bandura.html

http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/bandura.html