Banduras Theory talks about observational learning. He is famous for the Bobo doll experiment where a child watches someone abuse a doll than they where observed repeating what they saw. Bandura identified three types of observational learning which was the live model, verbal model, and symbolic model.   All three plays a role in society whereas people or children pick up habits and repeat them.

Intrinsic Reinforcement is one form of mental state that allows us to have internal reward for accomplishments that we had or did. For instance when you take upon yourself and are successful with it you feel good for your actions. In my own experiences the other day I took it upon myself to make some behavior changes in how I approach other employees and give out task for the day. The day ended very productive and the store made money and the employees where having fun while they where working.

I would like to also add that I as a child followed many things I saw while growing up. I lived in what you may want to call the ghetto or a sordid area of town. There where 14 story buildings with 10 apartments per floor; given you an insane asylum of 144 families. All low income and morally demoralized from the poor jobs and living conditions. There were some good people with good morals but I picked up the worse habits you can achieve in life, like gang violence, drugs and alcohol.  Whereas there was other kids that went on to finish school and leave the area and become good citizens. So like in the article most behaviorists don’t believe that observational learning is a going to lead to behavior changes  but they do believe that observational behavior can also teach us behaviors without performing them.

There are steps toward the success of observational learning and that’s attention, retention, reproduction, and motivation. This educational method is used on a daily basis in our educational system by teachers, parents in order to develop children self- efficacy.  

I would like to close with this terrible teaching method that I was introduced in. In the high school I went the staircases where structured with cages so they can lock the hallways and staircases up because the3 school system treated the students like animals they acted like animals. On the other hand my first 8 years of school was in a parochial school where there where no cages but physical abuse and racism whereas my environment looked good but mentally I was so full of anger that I wanted to hurt someone everyday I walked into that school. I was the only Latino in my class and the rest of the students where white. So it doesn’t really matter where you live, it’s the mental enslavement that gives bad observational learning.  

 Source.  The theory comes from Banduras experiment see BoBO doll experiment on youtube. 

Written By Tyrone Garcia Author of the book  “Soap That doesn’t Clean”‘  available on all book selling websites and iuniverse.com