Vicarious Learning

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PSYC_6222_wk6_disc1Discussion 1 - Week 6 Vicarious Learning Vicarious learning is originally coined by Albert Bandura as he believed that direct reinforcement could not account for all types of learning (Friedman & Shustack, 2012). Vicarious learning is modeling and observation learning; it is a type of learning that comes from observing others’ behavior and adding that information to the possible repertoire of one’s own behavior (Friedman & Shustack, 2012). According to Bandura, vicarious learning can occur when the observer pays attention to an action and remembers the behavior that the observer can replicate the observed behavior (Friedman & Shustack, 2012). In the condition of observational learning, if a model

Based on the theory, the more an observer likes or respects the model, the more likely he/she is to replicate the behavior (Friedman & Shustack, 2012). The distinct characteristic of this model is that observational learning allows learning occur without being directly rewarded or punished for the behavior, which can be used to argue against behaviorism (Friedman & Shustack, 2012).The example of vicarious learning is, when a child sees her brother being punished for not showing respect to others she does not need to perform her disrespect behavior to receive the punishment (negative reinforcement) herself but will learn vicariously, through her observation of not to disrespect people. A study of examining the effect of observing a social performance with a negative outcome on a group of young children age 8-11, their fear-related beliefs and cognitive processing, found that vicarious learning experiences in childhood may contribute to the development of social anxiety

I agree with this study outcome because I was an example of the negative outcome group except I was not watching the film but watched my siblings’ real performance. I believe vicarious learning contributes to an individual’spersonality development, as it plays an important role of environmental learning. For example, many parents carefully create the positive environment for their children to grow because they want to control the positive models for their children to learn. There is a famous legend called 孟母三遷, which describes a successful Chinese scholar Montz’s mother has moved around for three times in order to look for the best neighborhood for Montz to grow (learn) when he was young. She moved from place to place until finally find a quiet and rich cultural neighborhood for her son to learn which was the evidence of vicarious learning environment.