Social learning perspective

Through the social learning perspective, the combination of individual experience with reward and punishment drive social behavior. Social learning is both direct and indirect. Direct learning is what parents and authority figures tell us what to do. Indirect learning is how the people around us influence our decisions and behaviors. Direct and indirect influences can positively and negatively impact behavior (Kenrick, Neuberg, & Cialdini, 2007; Myers, 2008). On the negative side, in the 1960s, Albert Bandura (1961) observed something that may seem obvious to any parent: children imitate aggressive behavior. Similarly, Craig Anderson and Karen Dill (2000) found that violent video games increase players' aggressive behavior and delinquency while lowering academic achievement.

The social learning perspective is like the sociocultural perspective. It looks for causes of behavior in the environment and assumes that an objective reality exists. A key difference is that the social learning perspective takes a micro view that focuses on an individual’s unique experience. Social learning assumes that habits learned by the individual in early life are difficult to break. In comparison, the sociocultural perspective takes a macro view that considers how the forces of the group influence individual behavior, assuming that norms change quickly (Kenrick, Neuberg, & Cialdini, 2007).