The Social Learning Environment And Counseling Essay

Social learning theory (SLT), cognitive approach, behaviorist approach, humanistic approach, psychodynamic approach and biological approach.

Each person is a social being and is aware of the environment that they live in. People learn from their experiences as well as from observing others. When children learn about their environment first hand or by observing another, negative and positive behaviors are reinforcement. If a child does a behavior and receives a reward for that behavior, the rewarded behavior is reinforced. Similarly, when someone witnesses negative consequences based on their behavior, they tend to modify that behavior (Schmied & Tully, 2009, p. 9).

The fundamentals of the social learning theory significantly describe offenders and their criminal behavior which is learned based on observation and imitation. A researcher by the name of Albert Bandura along with coworkers tested the social learning theory with several experiments on children and their imitation of aggression based on what they saw and were exposed to. Bandura’s focus was to prove that human behavior such as aggression is learned through social imitations and copying the actions of others. Walters (1966) gives details about the Bobo doll experiment and explains its purpose related to learning a violent behavior based on observation. In the experiment, the tested subjects were children of both sexes, ranging from the ages of three to six years. Some of the children were exposed to a non-aggressive adult, while the other children were placed in a room with an aggressive adult who would both physically and verbally attack the Bobo doll. The control group in the experiment was not exposed to any adult. During the second phase of the experiment, the children were left in a room by themselves with the toys, and watched to see if they would demonstrate the aggressive behavior like that of which they observed adults doing earlier. Walter (1966) describes the results as “children who had been exposed to an aggressive model showed more imitative physical and verbal

Observational learning is another simple behavioral training technique. It’s as simple as its name, you learn by watching others. For example, let’s say you are trying to learn to balance a book on your head. You’ve been watching your parent do it and you try it out as well by imitating their behaviors that you previously observed. That’s a basic example of learning by observation. This helps us better understand human behavior in this way: it tells us that humans observe other behavior and try to imitate it in order to achieve the same, or a similar effect. That is another basic aspect of human behaviors that also occurs on a daily basis.

The two theories discussed here will be the Psychodynamic Theory and the Social Learning Theory. Psychodynamic theories include the wisdom of Freud and Jung. Freud discusses, defense mechanisms, understanding the ego as it relates to rational thinking and the superego in regard to mortality. Whereas the Social Learning Theory includes those works from Bandura, Watson, and Piaget among others. This theory will focus on imitation, observation and modeling another’s behavior to achieve a certain desired outcome. Although their conceptual theories differ, they both reflect, shape, and interpret the very essence of the human psyche and how we have evolved and developed over the years.

People, especially younger children, are learning daily from their role models and the environment. Any type of behavior display socially is learned primarily by observing and imitating the actions of others. The social behavior is also influenced by being rewarded and/or punished for these actions.

Through the Social Learning Theory, one can absorb new behaviors from others or one can form attitudes toward something that can in turn influence behavior. The attitudes we acquire may sometimes be implicit or explicit and depending on the strength of these attitudes and environmental factors, behaviors may come about. If implicit attitudes are strong and an opposing explicit is weak, the behavior will portray the implicit attitude unconsciously.

The social learning approach as explained in P1, suggests that learn new behaviours and information by observing other that are around them. This is also known as observational learning.

In Behaviorism, learning is a change in observable behavior. The environment causes behavior and there is a one-way correlation between the interactions among behavior, environment, and personal factors (Walsh, 2016). In Cognitivism, learning is related with distinct changes among states of knowledge rather than with changes in the odds of response. It focuses more on the notion of the learning process and the information is accepted, organized, saved, and restored by the brain. In the Social

Through this experiment, he sought to test social learning theories regarding observation and imitation. Bandura placed young children in a room with one adult and a toy doll, named Bobo. The children were split into groups, with some witnessing the adults acting kindly to the doll; and others showing aggressive and violent behaviors. Following the period of observation, children were placed in isolation with a set of toys to play with. Children exposed to the aggressive behaviors imparted on Bobo by adults began to mimic and take cues from their older counter-parts.

The social learning theory suggests that people learn new behaviors through observation of factors in their environment, by taking note of other’s

Albert Bandura’s social learning theory expresses that people learn best by viewing others. Positive reinforcement such as praise or financial reward encourages repeat behavior while negative reinforcement such as punishment or monetary fines discourages it. Because of such, when training new employees, modeling is the best form of demonstration. The training demands are best suited when observing an experienced employee and then model his or her behavior. This cost-effective method takes place right in the workplace environment.

Most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling; from observing others. If people did not observe the different behaviors that others were doing there would be nothing new ever going on in the world. Everyone would essentially be almost like a robot because there would be no new behavior. Social learning is the best example of this, in life there is not one thing that you can look at and not relate it to social learning. The biggest example is social media. On social media everyone can be considered a “copycat” and that their post, tweet ,and or status is not original. And somewhere out there , there may be a post that is very similar to the one you are about to see,watch, and or read.

In regards to social cognitive theory, one is looking at the fact that people learn by observing behavioral

Albert Bandura is considered the developer of social learning theory, which is also known as social cognitive theory (Corey, 2013; Feist et al., 2013; Thoma et al., 2015). Badura’s theory, while based upon the principles of behaviorism, departs from the traditional behavioral model and leaves room for the exploration of unobservable mental states and their influence on behavior (Corey, 2013; Thoma et al., 2015). Social Cognitive theory bases its theory of learning on two types of learning processes: observational learning and enactive learning (Feist et al., 2013). In contrast to Skinner’s belief that reinforcement is required for learning, Bandura believes that learning is possible simply by observing the behavior of others; while reinforcement facilitates learning, it is not a necessary requirement (Feist et al., 2013). Enactive learning is learning through direct experience, and is similar to the concept of operant conditioning; people determine appropriate behaviors by evaluating their behavior and the potential consequences thereof (Feist et al., 2013). Where behavioral theory adopts the ABC approach to behavior, social cognitive theory uses a BPE approach known as Triadic Reciprocal Causation. In TRC, BPE stands for behavior, person variables, and environment (Feist et al., 2013). Within the TRC, the term person encompasses many variables including memory, judging, anticipation, gender, social position, physical attributes, and planning; the belief is that