The Importance Of Observational Learning

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Observational learning and Adolescent
Observational learning is stated as learning of a particular behavior by observing some model. The observer will follow or learn the behavior of a model if he possesses the characteristics such as talent, intelligence, power, good look, or popularity–that the observer finds attractive or desirable.
It have a huge impact on the adolescent. Adolescent is defined to be a person who is growing to a teenage from a child and this period of growth is called adolescence. Adolescence is a learning period of life during which an adolescent learn different new behaviors through the process of observational learning. There are four factors which have an important role for successful observational learning named as: …show more content…

One of the studies conducted in the United States have showed that those parents who are involved in delinquency acts will have more chances that their adolescent will be also involved in the criminal activities (the Effects of Parental Dysfunction on Children, New York, NY: Springer, US.). This is due to observational learning. Parents are like a model for their children and in observational learning a particular behavior is learned by observing a model. It is argued that irritable, ineffective discipline and poor parental monitoring are the most proximal determinants of the early development and maintenance of antisocial …show more content…

This is achieved by the process of punishment. The concept of punishment was introduced by the Skinner in the Operant Conditioning (Psychology: Themes & Variations 8th edition, 2010). It is very useful technique to remove any unhealthy behavior. If there is hard punishment for conducting some anti-social behavior and adolescent observe that punishment then there are very few chances that adolescent will imitate that behavior.
There are several examples of punishment as follows:
• If parents put a punishment of not giving pocket money to their children if they misbehave with someone then there will be very less chances that adolescent will learn this type of behavior.
• If government will set a punishment on media for showing violent things then again adolescent will not learn any anti-social behavior because they are not observing any anti-social behavior. Moreover media itself can eliminate negative behaviors if they show hard punishment for doing violent