Observational Learning is the learning by which we observe others. The process of observing and imitating a specific behavior is called modeling. We can glimpse the roots of observational learning in other species. After a fight, stumptail macaque monkeys reconcile with each other by approaching their opponent and becoming friends. These Rhesus monkey's rarely make up quickly, however they grow up forgiving more often then not, usually they reconcile within 3 minutes ( de Waal & Johanowicz 1993). Imitation is all the more striking to humans. So many of our ideas, fashions, and habits are passed by imitation that researchers have given a name to these transmitted cultural elements. We humans are supreme meme machines. ( Susan Blackmore 1999). The imitation of models shapes children's development. Shortly after birth an infant may imitate an adult who is sticking out their tongue. By 9 months infants will imitate novel play behaviors, and by 14 months they will imitate acts modeled on television. (Melzoff,1988: Meltzoff & Moore, 1989, 1997). To persuade children to smoke simply expose them to adults, parents, older youth, and attractive media models who smoke.
Picture this scene from a famous experiment devised by Albert Bandura, the pioneering research of observational learning ( Bandura & others, 1961). A preschool child is working on a drawling, and an adult in another part of the room is working with some tinkertoys. The adult then gets up and for nearly 10 pounds, kicks and throws an inflated Babo doll around the room while yelling. After observing the adult's outburst, the child is taken to another room where there are many appearing toys. The child is then taken away for the toys and put in a room filled with fewer toys, including the Babo doll. What does this child then do. Compared with children not exposed to the aggressive out burst, to the ones who were, the children exposed where likely to lash out at the doll.
