Observational learning, as shown in Bandura’s Bobo doll experiment, involves learning by watching and imitating, rather than learning associations between different events. We learn to anticipate a behavior’s consequences, because we experience vicarious reinforcement or vicarious punishment.
Our brain’s frontal lobes have a demonstrated ability to mirror the activity of another’s brain. The same areas fire when we perform certain actions (such as responding to pain or moving our mouth to form words), as when we observe someone else performing those actions. Some psychologists believe mirror neurons enable this process. (Others argue it may be more due to the brain’s distributed brain networks.)
Children tend to imitate what a model does and says, whether the behavior being modeled is prosocial (positive, constructive, and helpful) or antisocial.
If a model’s actions and words are inconsistent, children may imitate the hypocrisy they observe.
Media violence can contribute to aggression. This violence-viewing effect may be prompted by imitation and desensitization.
Experimental studies have shown that participants react more aggressively and with less compassion when they have viewed violence (instead of entertaining nonviolence).
Multiple-Choice Questions
Bandura’s famous Bobo doll experiment is most closely associated with which of the following?
Latent learning
Classical conditioning
Operant conditioning
Cognitive maps
Observational learning
Which of the following processes is the best term for explaining how we learn languages?
Biofeedback
Discrimination
Modeling
Insight
Creativity
Which of the following is the most likely consequence of the brain’s tendency to vicariously experience something we observe?
Actual physical injury
The risk of misremembering our own actions
Interference with associative learning
The elimination of classically conditioned responses to stimuli
A confusion between reinforcers and rewards in an operant conditioning setting
When is prosocial modeling most effective?
When the model acts in a way consistent with the prosocial lesson
When the model verbally emphasizes the prosocial lesson but acts as she chooses
When the model is predisposed to the prosocial conduct
When the observer has a close personal relationship with the model
When the model is well-known
After observing his sibling walk across a balance beam, Joe’s brain reacts in a way that will enable him to imitate the action later. Which part of his brain may be responsible for this?
Reward system
Somatosensory cortex
Mirror neurons
Motor cortex
Aggression areas
Practice FRQs
A young boy is left at home with his older brother while their parents drop off the family car for repairs. While the parents are out, the older brother prepares lunch for the young boy. Then the older brother takes the younger brother outside, where he entertains him by building several fires with small twigs. Explain how the older brother’s conduct is related to: