Albert Bandura's Theory Of Learning Through Social Interaction

Have you ever questioned the fact that children will imitate aldults’ behaviors, especially their parents’? What seemed to be such an intuitive thought today was thought to be exotic before the 1960s. One famous experiment conducted by Albert Bandura in 1961 has changed all that and help shaped the world we are living in today. If you are so familiar with that concept of learning through social interaction, then you have Bandura to thank for that.
Banura set up this experiment in order to prove his theory about observational theory, that human can learn from watching other people. Therefore, in Standford University in 1961, he invited over 72 kids (36 boys and 36 girls) and some aldults (both male and female) to be the role model. He set up
A few years before Bandura’s findings, Ian Pavlov had made a major discovery also in the process of learning. His works suggested that his learning can be taught through series of connected stimuli and it can be done through external events rather than internal cognitive thinkings of human being. The similarity of Bandura’s experiment was also showed one kind of external learning process. However, the research hastened the evolution of 20th century experimental psychology from pure behaviorism to what now known as social-cognitive learning. In other words, it showed us that there are more than one way of learning. Also, Pavlov’s model of learning is flawed due to the fact that it based solely on the associations of different stimuli, punishments and rewards. However, this is not necessary the case. Regarding each species distinct biological structure, different animals will be easier to trained to do one thing rather than another. Especially in human, our process is much more complex and it involved our thinkings, influences, experiences and even emotions. This is what Bandura has successfully done in adding another layer of complexity in this important mental process of acquiring new
We humans do it every day, either unintentionally or intentionally, we are all products of our environment, of what influence us. We do not need past experience to learn new things, we just pick it up from other people. As a result, this is a extremely important message for and aldult in general and parents specifically. Since baby can imitate so quickly and precisely, even though they have yet to understand the nature of their behavior, it is vital of how an environment can affect this child and parents are powerful role models. Positive, supportive and loving models usually prompt similar behavior in others, just as negative, aggresive modeling can spark antisocial effects. Another thing to keep in mind that it is it is not so easy to displace what we have learned as a