Observational Learning
Modified: 2025-01-06 4:27 PM CST
- Another category of learning is imitation or vicarious learning or
observational learning.
- Much of human behavior is found in this
category.
- Think of the following examples.
- What would you do if you
were behind someone who just lost $2.00 in the soft-drink machine?
- Most likely you would not put your money in that machine.
- Or,
suppose it is raining cats and dogs, and the people in front of you
step off the curb into a puddle.
- They disappear and the umbrella they
were sharing is floating on the puddle.
- Do you cross the street
there?
- Television also provides a rich source of situations to
imitate.
- A real concern to many is whether or not television causes an
increase in violent behavior in children and adults.
- Television broadcasters have voluntarily adopted warning labels for
violent shows.
- Those labels allow parents to control the television
watching behavior of their children.
- The labels may also prevent
Congressional regulation of television content.
- The observational
learning of undesired behaviors can be largely prevented in young
children if parents watch shows with their children and explain the
action as it occurs.
- Another example of modeling for violent behavior occurs when
parents say one thing but do another.
- For example, parents may tell
older children that they may not hit a younger sibling. But when they do,
however, the parents spank the older children.
- Children detect the mixed message, namely, that violence is acceptable under certain
circumstances, and their violent behavior may not be decreased by
their parents' punishment.
- A similar pattern of abuse may explain the
cycle of child abuse.
- Most child abusers were themselves abused
children.
- Child abusers learned from their parents and are teaching
their children to be abusers also.
- Still another example is seen in an old public service television
commercial.
- A father and son are enjoying a day at the park.
- The son
is imitating everything his father does, such as throwing rocks into
a pond.
- They sit with their backs to a tree, and the father lights up
a cigarette.
- The ad ends with the boy reaching for the cigarettes.
- Do any animals model? A few do.
- Famous examples include the great
tit, Parus major, a small European bird.
- In the 1930s and 40s
researchers noticed that a great increase in cream stealing took
place in Great Britain, and that it had spread north and west from
London.
- Apparently, one great tit had learned to steal the cream from
the top of milk bottles, others imitated, and the behavior became
common over a 12 year period. (Most of you may not remember that milk
used to be delivered door to door in bottles. The bottles had a
cardboard top. Further, before homogenization was common, the cream
was left in the bottle, because it was lighter it floated to the top.
Hence the old saying. The cream always rises to the top.)
- Japanese macaques, (monkeys) have also been observed to learn by
imitation or observation.
- The interesting thing about their learning
is that its spread through the group depended on which monkey was
being observed.
- If a dominant male was observed making a novel
response, that response spread quickly through the group.
- Responses
made by females spread much more slowly, and in some cases, older,
dominant males never imitated those novel behaviors.
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