Observation and imitation
Definition
Social learning theory
Bandura's idea that behaviour is learnt by watching and imitating other people, especially when you see the model being rewarded for that behaviour.
- Observation means attending to what a model does. Imitation is the copying that can follow, sometimes weeks later.
- The two are separate steps, because plenty of behaviour is watched and never copied.
- Once you have identified with a model, observation is how their behaviour gets into your head.
- Applied to crime, this means an offence can be acquired without anybody ever setting out to teach it.
Key Idea
- Observation leaves a stored version of the behaviour in your head, and imitation is performing it when a matching situation turns up.
- Nobody has to be taught an offence for it to be learnt, because attending closely to a model who commits it supplies the method.
- Because the stored version lasts, the copying can appear weeks after the watching.
The steps from watching to copying
Definition
Imitation
Copying a behaviour you have watched somebody else perform. The copy can come straight away or much later, once a similar situation arises.
- You pay attention to the model, which means noticing the detail of what they do rather than glancing at it.
- You retain the behaviour, which means keeping a stored version of how the act is done.
- When a matching situation comes up, you reproduce the behaviour, which is the imitation itself.
- Whether you go through with it comes down to motivation, so an act you expect to pay off is the one you perform.
- Because the store lasts, imitation can appear long after the observation, so a delay does not mean nothing was learnt.
Example
- A 12-year-old watches older boys push through the ticket barrier at their local station without paying.
- They see exactly where to stand and when to move, and that detail is stored.
- Three weeks later, running late with no credit on their card, they do the same thing.
What is observed alongside the act
- The method is learnt, so you pick up how the act is physically done.
- The situation is learnt, so you also pick up which circumstances the act works in.
- Avoiding consequences is learnt, including where staff stand and which route leaves no witnesses.
- The normality of the act is learnt too, because watching people you know do it repeatedly makes it look ordinary.
Note
- The same four things are picked up when the modelled behaviour is pro-social, so this route explains helping and volunteering as readily as offending.
- What gets stored is the method and the conditions it works in, so observation supplies the know-how rather than a motive.
- Anti-social and pro-social learning run alongside each other, since a young person watches models of both kinds every day.
Live models and symbolic models
- Live models: people physically present when the behaviour happens.
- Parents, siblings, friends and neighbours are watched over and over, which gives repeated chances to attend.
- They are usually similar to you, so their behaviour is the most likely to be reproduced.
- Symbolic models: people or characters observed through media.
- Television, film, music videos, social media clips and video game characters all supply behaviour to copy.
- Cooper and Mackie (1986) tested a symbolic model, and the children who had played the violent video game spent longer with the aggressive toy afterwards.
Note
- Observation and imitation explain how an offence is acquired.
- Why the offence is repeated is covered under reinforcement, later in the theory.
- Whether seeing the model rewarded raises imitation is dealt with under vicarious reinforcement.
Why not everything watched is copied
- Identification comes first, so a model you feel nothing towards is watched without being attended to closely.
- The act has to be within your ability, since you cannot imitate a skill you do not have.
- Opportunity has to arise, because a stored behaviour needs a matching situation before it can be reproduced.
- What happened to the model matters, so a model who was caught is a far weaker prompt than one who walked away.
Common Mistake
- Watching crime does not make somebody a criminal, because observation only supplies the behaviour.
- Observation and imitation are two separate steps, so merging them into one word loses the distinction a question can ask about.
- Cooper and Mackie (1986), rather than Bandura's Bobo doll study, is the study to know for this topic.
Turning this into marks
- When the difference between observation and imitation is asked for, give two genuinely separate definitions rather than one sentence that loosely covers both.
- Name retention and motivation, because writing that the child remembered what they saw does not secure the knowledge mark.
- Trace one plain example, such as fare evasion, through the four steps in order, so each step earns its own credit.
- The mark most often lost is treating a delay of weeks as proof that nothing was learnt, when retention is what makes the delay possible.
Self review
- What is the difference between observation and imitation?
- Name the four steps that turn watching a model into copying them.
- What is retention, and why does it matter for delayed imitation?
- Give one difference between a live model and a symbolic model.
- Name two reasons an observed behaviour might never be imitated.
