observational learning

In observational learning, we learn by watching others and then imitating, or modeling, what they do or say. For instance, have you ever gone to YouTube to find a video showing you how to do something? The individuals performing the imitated behavior are called models. Research suggests that this imitative learning involves a specific type of neuron, called a mirror neuron (Hickock, 2010; Rizzolatti, Fadiga, Fogassi, & Gallese, 2002; Rizzolatti, Fogassi, & Gallese, 2006).Social Learning Theory

Observational Learning in Animals

Humans and animals alike are capable of observational learning. For example, in a study of social learning in chimpanzees, researchers gave juice boxes with straws to two groups of captive chimpanzees.

The first group dipped the straw into the juice box and then sucked on the small amount of juice at the end of the straw. The second group sucked through the straw directly, getting much more juice. When the first group, the “dippers,” observed the second group, “the suckers,” what do you think happened? All of the “dippers” in the first group switched to sucking through the straws directly. By simply observing the other chimps and modeling their behavior, they learned that this was a more efficient method of getting juice (Yamamoto, Humle, and Tanaka, 2013).^[1]

Social Learning Theory

Like Tolman, whose experiments with rats suggested a cognitive component to learning, psychologist Albert Bandura’s ideas about learning were different from those of strict behaviorists who thought all behaviors were conditioned.

Bandura and other researchers proposed a brand of behaviorism called social learning theory, which took cognitive processes into account. According to Bandura, pure behaviorism could not explain why learning can take place in the absence of external reinforcement. He felt that internal mental states must also have a role in learning and that observational learning involves much more than imitation. In imitation, a person simply copies what the model does. Observational learning is much more complex.

According to Lefrançois (2012), there are a few steps in how observational learning can occur:

1. You learn a new response. For example, after watching your coworker get chewed out by your boss for coming in late, you start leaving home 10 minutes earlier so that you won’t be late.
2. You choose whether or not to imitate the model depending on what you saw happen to the model.
3. You learn a general rule that you can apply to other situations.

observational models

Bandura identified three kinds of models: live, verbal, and symbolic:

• A live model demonstrates a behavior in person, like when one person gets up on a surfboard, another can observe how it was done.
• A verbal instructional model does not perform the behavior, but instead explains or describes the behavior, as when a soccer coach tells his young players to kick the ball with the inside of the foot, not with the toe.
• A symbolic model can be fictional characters or real people who demonstrate behaviors in books, movies, television shows, video games, or Internet sources (Figure 2).

Observational modeling is used all the time in the world of marketing and advertising. This commercial played for months across the New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut areas, Derek Jeter—an award-winning baseball player for the New York Yankees, is advertising a Ford. The commercial aired in a part of the country where Jeter is an incredibly well-known athlete. He is wealthy and considered very loyal and good-looking. What message are the advertisers sending by having him featured in the ad? How effective do you think it is?

What is something you have learned how to do after watching someone else?

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