Lesson 6 : Development of Personality- Behavioural perspective
Social learning theory- Albert Bandura (1977)
Social learning theorists argue that people can learn behavior through other means rather than only reinforcement. They devised an important notion called observational learning : people learn by observing others’ behaviors and the reinforcement they receive. These other people are called “Models”.
Observational learning: It is one way we might learn behaviors without reinforcement, but reinforcement remains very important in determining whether a person will actually perform a behavior. We might observe and learn many behaviors, but may not perform them.
The process of observational learning:
It takes place in these four steps- attention, retention, reproduction and motivation
Attention – attending to the specific behaviour one wants to learn
Retention – retaining the details of that behaviour for longer duration
Reproduction – reproducing the behaviour at suitable time and when situation demands
Motivation– an important aspect of learning behaviours for long term use
Vicarious reinforcement - This takes place when we observe another person receive positive reinforcement for certain behaviours. We tend to expect that behavior will fetch us positive result and therefore perform the same action when similar situations arise.
Participants