Immersive virtual environments and gaming are highly popular media formats that have been suggested to wield a powerful influence over real-world social behavior. The traits and motivations of virtual avatars might prime or encourage players to act in specific ways after navigating a simulated space.
To investigate this, psychologists recruited 64 undergraduate students (aged 18 to 30 years old). The participants were randomly allocated to one of two conditions in a virtual reality simulation:
After 20 minutes of gameplay, participants completed the session and were given 5 silver tokens as compensation for their time. On their way out of the laboratory, they passed a clearly labelled food bank donation box where they could optionally drop any number of their tokens. Researchers recorded whether participants donated any of their tokens (prosocial act) or kept all of them (selfish/neutral act).
Explain how useful social learning theory could be in accounting for the findings of the "Rescue Ranger vs Loot Bandit" study.
205 exam-style questions on Edexcel A Level Psychology Content, covering Main features of classical conditioning, Pavlov (1927) salivation in dogs, Main features of operant conditioning, Properties of reinforcement, Behaviour modification and shaping, Main features of social learning theory, Social learning stages, Bandura (1961, 1963) Bobo doll experiments, Bandura (1965) vicarious reinforcement, Learning theories and phobias, Treatments for phobias, Individual differences, and Developmental psychology. Each one has a worked solution and a mark scheme showing where the marks go.