Correct Answer - Option 2 : If the model frowned when hitting the doll.
Bandura’s Social Learning Theory of Personality is based on the premise that human behavior is largely acquired and that the principles of learning are sufficient to account for the development and maintenance of behavior.
- Bandura’s social cognitive theory emphasizes the social origins of behavior in addition to the cognitive thought processes that influence human behavior and functioning.
To illustrate that people learn from watching others, Albert Bandura constructed an experiment entitled “Bobo Doll Behaviour: A Study of Aggression.”
- In this experiment Bandura exposed a group of children to a video, featuring violent and aggressive actions. For the experiment Bandura made of a film of one of his students, a young woman, essentially beating up a bobo doll.
- Bobo doll is an inflatable, egg-shaped balloon creature with a weight in the bottom that makes it bob back up when you knock him down. The woman punched the clown, shouting “sockeroo!” She kicked it, sat on it, hit with a little hammer, and so on, shouting various aggressive phrases. Bandura showed this film to groups of kindergartners who, as you might predict, liked it a lot.
- Bandura did a large number of variations on the study: The model was rewarded or punished in a variety of ways, the kids were rewarded for their imitations, the model was changed to be less attractive or less prestigious, and so on.
All these variations allowed Bandura to establish that there were certain steps involved in the modeling process:
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Attentional Processes: In order to learn, you need to pay attention. Anything that detracts your attention is going to have a negative effect on observational learning. If the model is interesting or there is a novel aspect to the situation, you are far more likely to dedicate your full attention to learning.
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Retentional Processes: The ability to store information is also an important part of the learning process. We store what we have seen the model doing in the form of mental images or verbal descriptions. When so stored, we can later “bring up” the image or description, so that we can reproduce it with our own behavior.
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Reproduction Processes: Once you have paid attention to the model and retained the information, it is time to actually perform the behavior you observed.
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Motivational Processes: In order for observational learning to occur and be successful, you have to be motivated to imitate the behavior that has been modeled. Reinforcement and punishment play an important role in motivation. While experiencing these motivators can be highly effective, one can also observe other experiences such as some type of reinforcement or punishment that others are being subjected to.
Thus,it is concluded that if the model frowned when hitting the doll have made the children’s observational learning even more effective.
