Module 30 Observational Learning
Cognition supports observational learning (also called social learning), in which higher animals, especially humans, learn without direct experience, by watching and imitating others. A child who sees his sister burn her fingers on a hot stove learns not to touch it. We learn our native languages and various other specific behaviors by observing and imitating others, a process called modeling.
Picture this scene from an experiment by Albert Bandura, the pioneering researcher of observational learning (Bandura et al., 1961): A preschool child works on a drawing. An adult in another part of the room builds with Tinkertoys. As the child watches, the adult gets up and for nearly 10 minutes pounds, kicks, and throws around the room a large inflated Bobo doll, yelling, “Sock him in the nose. . . . Hit him down. . . . Kick him.”
Albert Bandura “The Bobo doll follows me wherever I go. The photographs are published in every introductory psychology text and virtually every undergraduate takes introductory psychology. I recently checked into a Washington hotel. The clerk at the desk asked, ‘Aren’t you the psychologist who did the Bobo doll experiment?’ I answered, ‘I am afraid that will be my legacy.’ He replied, ‘That deserves an upgrade. I will put you in a suite in the quiet part of the hotel’” (2005). A recent analysis of citations, awards, and textbook coverage identified Bandura—shown here receiving a 2016 U.S. National Medal of Science from President Obama—as the world’s most eminent psychologist (Diener et al., 2014).
The child is then taken to another room filled with appealing toys. Soon the experimenter returns and tells the child she has decided to save these good toys “for the other children.” She takes the now-frustrated child to a third room containing a few toys, including a Bobo doll. Left alone, what does the child do?
Compared with children not exposed to the adult model, those who viewed the model’s actions were more likely to lash out at the doll. Observing the aggressive outburst apparently lowered their inhibitions. But something more was also at work, for the children imitated the very acts they had observed and used the very words they had heard (Figure 30.1).
Figure 30.1 The famous Bobo doll experiment
Notice how the children’s actions directly imitate the adult’s.
That “something more,” Bandura suggests, was this: By watching models, we experience vicarious reinforcement or vicarious punishment, and we learn to anticipate a behavior’s consequences in situations like those we are observing. We are especially likely to learn from people we perceive as similar to ourselves, as successful, or as admirable. Functional MRI (fMRI) scans show that when people observe someone winning a reward (and especially when it’s someone likable and similar to themselves), their own brain reward systems activate, much as if they themselves had won the reward (Mobbs et al., 2009). When we identify with someone, we experience their outcomes vicariously. Even our learned fears may extinguish as we observe another safely navigating the feared situation (Golkar et al., 2013). Lord Chesterfield (1694–1773) had the idea: “We are, in truth, more than half what we are by imitation.”
Bandura’s work provides an example of how basic research “pursued for its own sake” can have a broader purpose. “The Bobo Doll studies,” he reflected (2016), “provided the principles for unforeseen global applications 25 years later.” Insights derived from his research have not only been used to restrain televised violence, but also to offer social models that have helped reduce unplanned childbearing, protect against AIDS, and promote environmental conservation.
So, we learn by observation—but how do our brains do so?