Vaillancourt 1

Kelsea Vaillancourt
HDF 308 TR 9:30AM
Inst. Megan Goodwin
February 23rd, 2016
Short Paper #2
Albert Bandura was a strong believer that children dont necessarily learn on their own.
According to his Social Learning Theory, they learn through modeling and imitation. Children
can learn through visual models, like watching someone do something, or symbolic models, like
the television, books, or verbal instruction. Modeling has been found to have a great impact on
the way that children act. It brings the saying, monkey see, monkey do, to life.
As stated before, modeling can really affect the way a child behaves. In an experiment
done by Bandura, children watched a film that depicted a man physically and verbally abusing a
stuffed animal. In some videos, the man was reprimanded, while in others, he was rewarded. In
the third video, no consequence came to the man. The children were then placed in a room with
stuffed animals and were observed to see how they would react. Those who watched the man get
punished in the video were much less likely to act aggressively toward the stuffed animals.
Those children who watched the man get a reward and those who watched nothing happen to the
man were much more aggressive with the animals. He then offered the children a reward for
abusing the stuffed animals, which led all of the children to partake in the aggressive behavior,
no matter which video they watched. Reinforcement plays a big part in modeling and imitating.

Vaillancourt 2

A child who sees someone being positively reinforced for an action is much more likely to copy
said action.
This proves that children learn through watching others actions. In the example of the
after school program, Bandura would most likely say that the children in that situation learned to
be aggressive by watching someone else do the same thing. They could have learned the
behavior from watching a violent movie, watching siblings fight, or observing any other
aggressive behavior. Bandura would also suggest that their behavior came from operant
conditioning. In certain settings, aggression is encouraged and rewarded, such as sports and
games, while in other settings, such as at school or home, it is discouraged. A child that is
encouraged to be aggressive in his football game might come to believe that it is acceptable to be
aggressive in other settings as well. Children also act according to gender roles. If a young boy
thinks that it is normal for all boys to be aggressive, he could then begin to act in that manner.
Girls tend to act more feminine because it is has been drilled into their heads: that they are not
supposed to be aggressive.
Social Learning Theory could provide insight for how to solve the issue in the after
school program. According to Bandura, parents should not spank their children, as it is only a
model of violence that the child might imitate. Instead, caretakers should work on mediation,
teaching self-control, and modeling good behaviors for the children. It has also been shown that
an adults modeling of generosity can help with a childs sharing. There are plenty of non-violent

Vaillancourt 3

ways to help solve an issue between aggressive children. We must model good behaviors that we
can encourage them to imitate.