Writing Resources
The Social Learning Theory SLT is most commonly associated with Albert Bandura’s works Bandura was a professor at Stanford who saw limitations in the learning theory of behaviorism He incorporated ideas of the cognitive and behavioral learning theories Grusec 1992 and created the Social Learning Theory SLT suggests that gender identity and role are sets of behaviors obtained through observational learning and vicarious reinforcement As individuals and children in particular observe the environment around them they see and encode people s models behaviors with some of them relating to gender Bandura 1971 After observing various models children may not only imitate behaviors that are gender appropriate in the eyes of society but also some that are not For instance a girl may reenact swaddling her baby doll as she saw her mother doing so while a boy may try to put on makeup as he also observed his mother doing so A child is nevertheless more likely to reproduce gender appropriate behavior due to the fact that it will receive a reinforcement for his or her behavior from the people around it The reinforcement can be positive or negative in the form of praise or punishment McLeod 2011 The mother of the little girl will most likely praise her daughter for being such a good mommy to her baby whereas the little boy will be told by his father not to do this again Depending on the form of reinforcement the child will learn the behaviors accepted by society as gender appropriate In addition Bandura Ross and Ross 1961 found in their well known study Transmission Of Aggression
