Reading focus
Syllabus: How Does Experience Change Behavior?
Separate consequences for the model from incentives offered to the observer, then compare the two assessment phases.
Why you’re reading it. Examine observational learning without equating failure to imitate with failure to learn.
A question to consider. The volunteer watches a demonstration but does not copy it until invited to show what they remember. What does that change establish, and what remains uncertain?
Why this reading
The same observed behavior can reflect both what someone has learned and whether they are willing to show it. Bandura varies consequences for a model, then changes incentives for the observer to make that distinction experimentally useful.
Before you read
Observational learning concerns changes arising from watching others. Imitation means reproducing aspects of their behavior. Keep consequences experienced by the adult model separate from incentives subsequently offered to the children. Acquisition and performance are different claims about the same measured responses.
Read for
- Compare the model-rewarded, model-punished, and no-consequence conditions before incentives are offered to the children.
- Use Figure 1 to examine how the between-condition pattern changes under incentives; distinguish this from the reported comparisons between boys and girls.
- Assess what the second phase reveals about the first, including the fact that incentives always came later.
Consider afterwards
- A child watches a demonstration but does not reproduce it. What test could distinguish lack of learning from reluctance to perform, and what alternative explanation would that test still leave open?
Editorial context
The experiment involved 66 children at one university nursery school and immediate imitation of modeled acts. It does not establish long-term aggression or a universal account of social learning. The setting, elicited aggression, and historical interpretations of sex differences warrant scrutiny. The 1965 incentive manipulation is the reason for this selection, beyond the familiarity of the Bobo-doll paradigm.