Social learning takes place through interaction with other human beings, through such learning processes as imitation, identification and role learning.
It is by means of social learning that internal controls in the individual such as conscience, the self-concept and the social roles are established. It is through social learning that various behaviour systems such as dependency, aggression and affiliation and the various strategies of goal achievement and defense are developed.
The classical respondent conditioning of Pavlov and the operant conditioning are both based on the principle of reinforcement and are relevant to all types of learning whether social or non-social. Thorndike (1898) formulated his famous laws of learning, namely, law of effect and law of exercise. Pavlov (1902) formulated his law of reinforcement which is essentially the same as Thorndike’s law of effect.
According to Thorndike the basis of learning, modification of response, is the formation of a bond between sensory input and impulses to action. He stated that the connection between the stimulus and response are strengthened by practice (repetition) and positive consequences (food- getting) and weakened by disuse and negative consequences (punishment).
Doob (1947) maintained that social behaviour is merely a complex form of behaviour and therefore the same general laws of learning by reinforcement can be applied to social learning also. He said that an attitude is an “implicit response.” The overt social response of an individual is an expression of the underlying (implicit) attitude and is the result of both the attitude state and motivation, habit etc.
Bern (1964) asserted that social interaction and social behaviour arises out of the reinforcements offered by significant persons to certain type of behaviour by the individual. He said that there is no need to invoke novel concepts to explain the development of social behaviour in the child. For Bern, social interactions are a subject of the larger class of behaviours which Skinner (1957) called “operant,” that is, the responses of the organism which operate on the environment to produce satisfaction of basic needs and thereby reinforce the learning.
Thus, the operant response is a voluntary response of the organism that is directed toward reinforcement.
Bern arrived at two functional relationships which the social operants bear to stimuli:
(a) Reinforcement control which occurs when a stimulus is presented as a consequence to an operant response so that it is rewarding to the responder; in this situation the reinforcing stimulus gains the capacity to control or govern the recurrence and strength of the operant response;
(b) Discriminative control, in which the operant response is nearly always reinforced in the presence of a given stimulus and almost never in its absence so that the stimulus functions to enforce discriminative control over operants. It is by the use of these two functional relationships of reinforcement control and discriminative control that the child learns not only language but also beliefs and attitudes.
Social learning takes place in the context of “others;” the learning situation always involves relationship with or interaction with the other person or persons. These social “others” vary in the degree to which they participate in the learning process. The most direct participation takes place in the dyadic relation of child-mother or student- teacher relationship.
The ‘dyadic’ relation refers to the influence of the behaviour of one person on the second person and which determines the subsequent actions of this person toward the first and so on. The personality of individual A may affect his behaviour toward person B; the personality of B may affect his perception of A’s behaviour and thus his reactions to A; B’s reactions may then have subsequent effects on A, and so on.
The least-direct participation occurs in the situation in which the mere presence of others results in increments in learning and performance as in the process of “social facilitation” identified by Lebon earlier and by Allport later.
Between these two extremes there are many degrees of social participation that define social context:
(a) Imitation:
Considerable proportion of human learning occurs through the observation of the behaviour of other human beings. This was identified as “imitation” long ago by Tarde (1890) who defined fashion as the “imitation of contemporaries” and custom and tradition as the “imitation of ancestors.” Observational learning situation or imitation involves the observer and the model.
Two important variables in the observational learning process are:
(1) The relationship that exists between the model and the observer; and
(2) The frequency, intensity and quality of the reinforcement.
The former is generally dealt with in terms of “identification.” When this factor becomes more relevant there is less need for reinforcing contingencies to give rise to imitation. Miller and Dollard (1941) have formulated a theory of social learning and imitation.
Since their basic assumption is that behaviour takes place only when there are primary drives or secondary drives and since they observed imitation to be an empirical fact, they found it necessary to conceptualize a “drive to imitate.” As an aspect of socialization, matching the responses of others becomes a rewarded response in its own right.
They proposed that three processes or mechanisms of imitation could account for most or all imitative behaviour:
(a) The same behaviour,
(b) The matched-dependent behaviour, and
(c) Copying.
Two persons may exhibit same behaviour either on the basis of imitation or on some other basis. Matched-dependent behaviour occurs in two-person interactions when one person is older, smarter or more skilled than the other.
Thus, the child will match the behaviour of and be dependent on the mother or some other older person. By this analysis Miller and Dollard looked upon imitation as a process of instrumental learning. According to this analysis the child does not learn through imitation but rather he learns to imitate. In matched-dependent behaviour, the crucial characteristics are the cues exhibited to the imitator by the model. Copying is a more complex form of imitation than the above two types.
While in matched-dependent behaviour, the imitator responds only to the cues of the model, in copying he also evaluates the similarity and difference between his response and the model’s response. On the basis of this evaluation he tends to approximate as closely as possible the behaviour of the model. They attribute social conformity to this acquired drive to copy; they equate it with the concept of “herd instinct” of Trotter (1920).
Albert Bandura (1962) has developed a data-based theory of imitation. Bandura and Walters (1963) look upon imitation as a form of “associative” learning and look upon reinforcement as a facilitator of performance rather than as an essential condition of learning. Thus, Bandura and Walters differ from Miller and Dollard, who looked upon imitative response as instrumental. Bandura refers to his theory as “meditational-stimulus contiguity theory.”
An antecedent stimulus can become an associated stimulus and elicit the same response as that of the model; in other words, the individual is able to imitate the model’s response, not because of any reward or reinforcement but by an associated stimulus or an imaginal or symbolic representation. This is how the observer’s ability to attach verbal labels to the model’s behaviour facilities this process.
The verbal associates become the internal cues. Thus, the internal representational ones become discriminative stimuli for overt matching patterns of behaviour.
Bandura (1966) has noted three general effects of models on the observer:
(i) The acquisition of novel responses,
(ii) Modification of existing behaviour, or
(iii) Facilitation of an existing behaviour.
(b) Identification:
It has been recognized as one of the explanations of how the child learns new behaviour-new roles—as well as how he develops internal controls or a conscience. Identification has been defined in a variety of ways. A person is said to identify himself with another when he wants to resemble another person; for instance, the small boy admires his father and wants to put on coat and pants like him; the girl wants to dress in a sari like the mother.
Learning by identification occurs frequently because in many social situations a person may be uncertain about how to act. One way out of the dilemma is to copy someone else’s behaviour. But a person does not choose a model at random. He has learnt through experience that some models are more likely to perform the right actions than others.
Thus, he may choose someone who resembles the previously successful models like the mother, the father, or the teacher or the older sibling or he may choose someone who receives rewards often, like the national hero or even the film star. Models for identification need not be actual persons. It is well known how the figures from the epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata, have become for more than three thousand years models for copying.
The classical example of a model is the image of Dronacharya set up by Ekalavya; since Ekalavya was a tribal youth to whom the Rajaguru Dronacharya was absolutely inaccessible, he set up the teacher’s image and learnt the art of archery by deep concentration and incessant practice by recalling the movements of Arjuna and other princes.
(c) Role Learning:
Some of the important concepts in role learning are:
(a) “Position,” the category of persons occupying a certain place in a social relation,
(b) “Role expectations,” the thoughts, feelings and behaviour considered appropriate or inappropriate for the occupant of a particular position, and
(c) “Role behaviour,” the actual behaviour of the person occupying the position considered relevant to the expectations associated with the position.
Role learning includes learning to behave, feel and see the world in the manner in which the person occupying the position does. The mother of the newborn infant not only learns how it feels to be a mother, but also gradually acquires insight into the feelings of her child. The child later on learns the role of the mother when she plays with her doll; the doll is the child and the child plays the role of the mother.
The boy learns to play the role of the father when he puts on his outdoor clothes and tries to go out of the house to attend office. The medical student learns the role of the doctor and so on.
Role learning encompasses all the principles of learning discussed above. The distinctive feature of role learning is that these principles combine to structure the behaviour of the group members in a manner appropriate to the positions they occupy in the group.
In fact, it may be said that the purpose of training programme is not only to help the individuals to learn the skills required for the work but also to learn the roles. If the role requirements are not learnt, the expectations about the rolls will not be met and so the situation gives rise to conflict.
Thus social learning involves not only operant learning, but also learning by observation of the behaviour of other persons. This involves the processes of imitation, identification and role playing.