VICARIOUS LEARNING: CHARACTERISTICS, BANDURA THEORY AND EXAMPLES - ECONOMÍA - 2025

The vicarious learning, learning by observation or indirect knowledge is a type of learning from indirect sources such as observation, instead of a direct instruction. The word "vicar" comes from the Latin "I see", which means "to transport". In Spanish, it has a symbolic meaning: with vicarious learning, information or learning is transported from one person to another through observation.

As we grow up, we go to college, where we receive direct instruction in many subjects. However, we also had a life outside of school, where we learned a lot by observing our parents and siblings, friends, neighbors and relatives.

We saw others doing everyday tasks, pursuing their hobbies and interests, and gaining physical skills that we also learned from, even without actively seeking it out. This is called vicarious learning or observational learning.

Some examples of this type of learning are to see how others practice a sport and repeat the movements, learn to draw by observing someone with experience, or avoid negative consequences having observed actions carried out by other people.

Characteristics of vicarious learning

Children observe the people around them behaving in different ways. These observed people are called "models."

In society, children are surrounded by many influential role models, such as their parents, characters from children's television series, friends in their peer group, and school teachers.

These role models provide examples of behavior to observe and emulate. This is how gender roles are learned, for example. The learning process by imitating these people is known as modeling.

Children pay attention to some of these models and allow their behavior to be modeled by imitating them. Children sometimes do this regardless of whether the behavior is gender-appropriate or not, but there are many processes that make a child more likely to reproduce the behavior that their society finds appropriate for their sex.

Bandura's theory of social learning

The role of vicarious experience is strongly emphasized in Bandura's (1977) theory of social learning. Albert Bandura is a Canadian psychologist and pedagogue, who for almost six decades has been responsible for contributions to the field of education and to other fields of psychology, including socio-cognitive theory, which evolved from social learning theory.

He has also been very influential in the transition between behaviorism and cognitive psychology and created the theoretical construct of self-efficacy.

Albert Bandura. Source: In his theory of social learning, Bandura agrees with the behavioral theories of learning related to classical conditioning and operant conditioning. However, add two important ideas:

1. Between the stimuli (the behaviors observed in other people) and the responses (the imitation of the observed behaviors), mediation processes occur, which we will describe later.
2. Behaviors are learned from the environment, through the observational learning process.

Bandura points out that the ability of individuals to learn by observing others allows them to avoid unnecessary mistakes in the tasks they are carrying out. We watch others make their own mistakes, so we avoid making them ourselves.

The basic elements of vicarious learning are described in the following statement:

By observing a model who carries out the behavior to be learned, an individual forms an idea of ​​how the response components must be combined and sequenced to produce the new behavior. In other words, people let their actions be guided by notions they have previously learned rather than relying on the results of their own behaviors. "

Through vicarious learning, we avoid spending time learning from our own mistakes because we have already observed others.

Factors influencing the observer and the model

The child is more likely to attend and imitate people whom he perceives as similar to himself. Consequently, they are more likely to imitate behaviors modeled by people of the same sex.

The nature of the observed model influences the probability that an observer will imitate the behavior in the future. Bandura pointed out that models with interpersonal attraction are more imitated, and those that don't are often rejected or ignored.

The credibility of the model and the success or failure of the results of the observed behavior are factors that also influence when deciding whether a behavior will be imitated or not.

Certain characteristics of the observer also play an important role in the modeling process.

The characteristics of the observing individual can be altered by the modeling process, which, in turn, can influence the effects of modeling. Individuals who are exposed to role models who are unsuccessful in performing a task, for example, may be less persistent when they carry out that same task afterwards.

The proposed explanation in this regard is that, through vicarious experience, people can lower their expectations of self-efficacy and, therefore, be less persistent when dealing with adversity.

Behavior modeling: positive and negative reinforcement

People around the child respond to the behaviors he imitates with reinforcement or punishment. If a child imitates the behavior of a role model and its consequences consist of reinforcement, the child is likely to continue to carry out that behavior.

If a father sees his daughter comforting her teddy bear and says “What a nice girl,” this is a reward for the girl and makes it more likely that she will repeat this behavior. Her behavior has been reinforced.

Reinforcement can be external or internal, and both positive and negative. If a child wants approval from her parents, this approval is an external reinforcement, but feeling satisfied or happy about having this approval is an internal reinforcement. A child will behave in a way that he believes will gain approval from others.

Reinforcement, whether positive or negative, will have little impact if the externally offered reinforcement is unrelated to the individual's needs. Reinforcement can be positive or negative, but the most important factor is that it often leads to a change in the person's behaviors.

Vicarious reinforcement: learning by observing the mistakes of others

The child takes into account, when learning, what happens to other people (the consequences of their behaviors) when deciding whether or not to copy the actions of others.

A person learns by observing the consequences of other people's behaviors. For example, the younger sister in a family who watches her older sister being rewarded for a particular behavior is likely to mimic this behavior later.

This is known as vicarious reinforcement.

Learning models and identification

Children have some role models that they identify with. They can be people in your immediate environment, like your parents or older siblings, or they can be fantastic characters or people from television. The motivation for identifying with a particular model is usually that it has a quality that the child would like to possess.

Identification occurs with another person (the model) and involves adopting observed behaviors, values, beliefs, and attitudes of the person with whom the child is identifying.

The term "identification" as used in social learning theory is similar to the Freudian term related to the Oedipus complex. For example, both involve internalizing or adopting the behaviors of another person.

However, in the Oedipus complex, the child can only be identified with the parent of the same sex, whereas in social learning theory, the child can potentially identify with anyone else.

Identification is different from imitation in that it involves a large number of behaviors being adopted, while imitation usually consists of copying a single behavior.

Mediation processes

Individuals do not automatically observe the behavior of a model and then imitate it. There are pre-imitation thoughts, and these considerations are called mediation processes. This occurs between observing the behavior (the stimulus) and the imitation or lack of it (the response).

Bandura proposed four mediation processes:

Attention

It refers to the extent to which we are exposed to the behavior of the model. For a behavior to be imitated, it must first get our attention.

We observe a large number of behaviors on a daily basis and many of these are not worth our attention. Attention, therefore, is extremely important so that a behavior has some influence on other people who are going to imitate it.

Retention

Retention has to do with the quality with which it is remembered. A person may be aware of someone else's behavior, but it is not always remembered, which obviously prevents imitation. Therefore, it is important that a memory of the behavior is formed so that it is later emitted by the observer.

Much of social learning is not immediate; this process is especially vital in these cases. Even if the behavior is reproduced shortly after seeing it, there needs to be a memory to refer to.

Reproduction

This is the ability to carry out the behavior that the model has displayed. Many times, we observe behaviors in the day to day that we would like to imitate, but we are not always capable of it.

We are limited by our physical and mental abilities. This influences our decisions regarding whether or not to try to imitate behavior.

Motivation

It refers to the desire to carry out the behavior that is observed. The rewards that follow a behavior will be considered by the observer: if the perceived rewards exceed the perceived costs (if the behavior requires some cost), then it is more likely that the behavior will be imitated in the future by the observer.

If the vicarious reinforcement that the observed person gets is not seen as important enough, then the behavior will not be imitated.

Criticisms of vicarious learning theory

The approach to social learning takes into account thought processes and the role they play in deciding whether a behavior will be imitated or not, and provides a more complete explanation of human learning by recognizing the role of mediation processes.

However, although it can explain some fairly complex behaviors, it cannot represent how we develop the range of behaviors, including thoughts and feelings.

We have a lot of cognitive control over our behavior and, for example, just because we have had violent experiences, it does not mean that we have to reproduce those behaviors.

Socio-cognitive theory

This is why Bandura modified his theory and in 1986 changed the name of his theory of social learning to "socio-cognitive theory", as a better description of the way we learn from our social experiences.

Some of the criticism of social learning theory comes from the commitment to the environment around people as the main influence on behavior.

It is quite limiting to describe human behavior based solely on nature or solely on the social environment, and attempts to do this underestimate the complexity of human behavior.

It is more likely that the different forms of human behavior are due to an interaction between the nature or biology of people and the environment in which they develop.

Social learning theory is not a complete explanation for all behaviors. This is, in particular, the case of people who have apparently not had a model from which to learn and imitate certain behaviors.

Mirror neurons

Finally, the discovery of mirror neurons has provided biological support for the theory of social learning. Mirror neurons are neurons first discovered in primates, which are activated both when the animal does something for itself and when it watches the same action being carried out by another animal.

These neurons constitute a neurological basis that explains the imitation.

Examples of vicarious learning

Some examples of this type of learning are:

-Learn to whistle after seeing someone do it.

-Observe the punishment of a classmate for misbehaving.

-Learn to sew by watching an online video.

-See how a person burns when touching something hot and learn not to do it.