Observational learning requires attention, representation, production, and motivation

Evidence

This mode of learning is governed by four psychological subfunctions. Attentional processes determine what people observe in the profusion of modeling influences and what information they extract from ongoing modeled events. Depicted activities are fleeting. Viewers cannot be much influenced by modeled events if they do not remember them. The second subfunction in modeling involves representational processes, whereby observed events are converted into symbolic representations that are available for future recall. In the third subfunction, which involves translational production processes, symbolic representations are translated into correspond-ing courses of action. People do not perform everything they have learned through observation. Motivational processes determine whether people will act on what they have learned. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 728

Laboratory studies have increased our understanding of the psychological mechanisms through which media influences produce their effects (Bandura, 1986). This mode of learning is governed by four psychological subfunctions. Attentional processes determine what people observe in the profusion of modeling influences and what information they extract from ongoing modeled events. Depicted activities are fleeting. Viewers cannot be much influenced by modeled events if they do not remember them. The second subfunction in modeling involves representational processes, whereby observed events are converted into symbolic representations that are available for future recall. In the third subfunction, which involves translational production processes, symbolic representations are translated into correspond-ing courses of action. People do not perform everything they have learned through observation. Motivational processes determine whether people will act on what they have learned. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 728

Categorization

• DEFINE: Bandura’s four subfunctions of observational learning are a reusable analytical framework.
• XREF: The motivation subfunction parallels the reader’s interest in why people rationalize rather than act on learned content. — connects to: Embedded observation immerses researchers in workers’ daily lives for deeper data — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 2098; Learning from five models beats learning from one in a controlled transmission chain — Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success: How Culture…, 698; Observational learning enables cumulative cultural evolution of behaviors no individual could invent alone — Joe Henrich and Robert Boyd, The Evolution of Conformist…, 19
• corroborated: 3 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 728