The Social Learning Theory: a social-psychological explanation for aggression
We all know that rhyme; “Monkey see, monkey do . . . even if it’s hurting you”. Not familiar with the end part? Well maybe it’s more familiar than you think. Here, we explain Albert Bandura’s ‘Social Learning Theory’, about how what we see just might shape how aggressive we have the potential to be.
‘The Social Learning Theory’ explains that aggression is a behaviour learned through observing those we deem role models, to go on then and imitate that same behaviour.
Children do this by observing the consequences of aggressive behaviour; seeing if and how reinforcement or punishment occurs. This process of watching, learning, and deciding whether or not to imitate is called vicarious learning.
Through observing the consequences of aggressive behaviour, a child will develop a sense of feeling about whether a behaviour is effective/beneficial or not, and so decide whether to imitate it. Bandura explained that for social learning to occur, children must be able to form a mental representation of the events in their social environment.
The child must also be able to imagine possible rewards or punishments for their aggressive behaviour regarding the expectancies of future outcomes. When appropriate opportunities arise in the future, the child will then go on to display the learned behaviour, as long as the expectation of reward outweighs their expectation of punishment that could instead occur.
Children who are rewarded for behaving aggressively (e.g. winning, getting attention, sense of power, ownership of property or food source) will go on to attach value to aggression as it becomes seen as a “tool that works”, and so will repeat the behaviour.
Likewise, children who have been punished for being aggressive or experiencing adverse effects will be less aggressive, and so less confident in its use, and instead will use different methods.
A classic piece of supporting evidence for this explanation of aggression comes from Banduras' famous 'Bobo Doll Study':
This study involved children observing aggressive and non-aggressive behaviour demonstrated by adult models. The children were then tested to see if they repeated the same behaviour or not.
In this experiment, the child participants were a mixed-gender sample and between the ages of 3-5 years of age. Half of the sample was exposed to aggressive adult models behaving aggressively towards the Bobo Doll, whilst the second half of the sample was exposed to non-aggressive models, with the adult models playing nicely with the Bobo Dolls.
After the children were exposed to their model in their condition they were then “frustrated” by being shown toys that they were not allowed to touch.
This resulted in the children who were in the aggressive condition repeating similar aggressive behaviours, as seen in the models toward the Doll. Similarly, children in the non-aggressive condition displayed next to no aggression towards the Doll.
This supports ‘The Social Learning Theory’s explanation of aggression as it demonstrates how children adopt aggressive behaviours they witnessed in the adult models they were exposed to.
A similar study was created by Bandura and Walters where they tried to investigate the reason why the children were motivated to be aggressive, even without an aggressive model. Here, the children were divided into 3 conditions where each group were shown a film with a different ending:
Condition 1: The model was rewarded for being aggressive towards the Bobo Doll.
Condition 2: The model was punished for being aggressive towards the Bobo Doll.
Condition 3: The model received no positive or negative consequences for being aggressive towards the Bobo Doll.
Results: The children’s behaviour seemed to differ depending on what film they had watched.
Condition 1 showed the highest level of aggression, Condition 2 showed the lowest levels of aggression, and Condition 3 showed aggression levels between that seen in Condition 1 and 2.
Bandura said that this supported the Social Learning Theory’s explanation of aggression as results showed the children behaving in accordance to their expectancy of consequences that they viewed in their model before their turn.
Although the evidence is compelling and seems to logically make sense; “monkey see, monkey do…”, however, did the punishment prevent the child from learning that action or just affect the child’s performance of aggression?
Bandura investigated this further with another study where instead, children in each condition were rewarded for being aggressive after model exposure. This resulted in all 3 of the groups showing very similar aggression levels, thus suggesting that learning behaviour from watching still occurs regardless of reinforcements, but that the reinforcements themselves are related to the behaviour actually being shown.
Issues of these studies, however, can be said to lack generalisability, as children were only used and so results may not apply to those older.
Despite this, Phillips et al. conducted research showing that murder and manslaughter rates in America increased significantly after a major televised boxing match. This suggests that ‘The Social Learning Theory’ may also have applications to adults, as viewers may imitate behaviour watched in violent boxing matches, supporting wider generalisation to older-aged samples.
By contrast, it is important to consider that there is no definite link that exposure to these boxing matches caused this behaviour, as there are numerous confounding variables that also could have influenced this phenomenon. It also can’t be definitively proved that those who acted aggressively even watched the boxing matches.
Banduras' studies can further be undermined due to the possibility that the children were merely displaying demand characteristics; behaving in a way they felt was expected, thus weakening the realism and validity of the children’s behaviours. Supporting this concern, Nobel et al. reported how one of the children was overheard telling his mother "Look Mommy, there is the doll we have to hit”.
Children’s aggression levels were fundamentally being measured against a doll also possibly giving unrepresentative results, as it may be likely that the children would have acted differently if the doll was instead an alive person or animal – something the child could identify with or have more of an emotional understanding about the effects of their aggression (i.e., a person or animal could fight back or the child could have empathy and not want to harm live and real company). The children knew the doll was not alive and so were not able to feel/talk, and so could have felt more comfortable acting aggressively towards it.
However, Bandura did demonstrate that children did still imitate aggression towards a real clown, once exposed to modelled aggression towards a filmed clown in another study; providing support for the theory once again.
‘The Social Learning Theory’ can explain differences in aggression between and within individuals, which links to Wolfgang et al. ‘The Culture of violence theory’, where it was proposed that in large societies, some subcultures develop “norms” that punish people for being violent to a greater degree than the dominant culture. Other cultures also encourage non-aggressive behaviour which reinforces non-violent behaviour, and so produces less aggressive individuals. This shows that different individuals and their use of aggression varies depending upon selective reinforcement and context-dependent learning. Thus, aggression levels differ due to their vicarious learning of aggression being rewarded in some situations and not others.
This supports ‘The Social Learning Theory’ and explains how cultural differences exist in displaying aggression and its levels.
In the Kung San Tribe of the Kalahari Desert, aggression is very rare due to how the tribe raises their children. Children of the tribe who argue/fight are not punished or rewarded, but instead are physically separated and distracted their attention to other things, therefore aggression is not reinforced and so occurs less as a behaviour when the children grow up. Also within this tribe, physical aggression or body language is avoided by adults and devalued by the Kung San Tribe as a whole; further reducing aggression being a frequent behaviour.
With no positive or negative reinforcement of aggressive behaviour in conjunction with no aggressive model, means there is almost no opportunity or motivation for the Kung San children to learn the aggressive behaviour, thus further providing support for ‘The Social Learning Theory’ of aggression being due to vicarious learning; learning through watching others.
Issues with this explanation of aggression however is that this approach is heavily reductionist as the theory portrays humans as simple creatures; ignoring the role of cognitive and biological factors, such as genetics that may pre-dispose some individuals to be more aggressive. Realistically multiple factors influence people's behaviour and temperament - these are factors ‘The Social Learning Theory’ ignores.
This explanation can also be criticised as being deterministic. This theory assumes that people are always likely to be aggressive when exposed to such behaviour. In reality, people have free will and can make all sorts of decisions.
In Bandura's study it was observed that the children who were most aggressive to the dolls were also more aggressive outside of the study; thus suggesting that children who were less aggressive and still exposed to aggression, exercised free will and displayed less aggression to the doll.
A further criticism is the issue of gender bias. Studies have shown that women are less aggressive the men as demonstrated by crime statistics, but male and female violent offences vary greatly, yet both are probably exposed to similar levels of aggression throughout their lives - such as through the media, reflected in family models etc. This phenomenon is not explained by ‘The Social Learning Theory’ and so undermines the validity of the theory.
‘The Bobo Doll Study’ also raises some ethical issues such as frustrating children with the Bobo Dolls, and encouraging children to behave aggressively through exposure is not ethical and could create harm or future issues. All participants must remain protected in studies.