Social modeling through media can bypass trial-and-error limits and spread behavior change worldwide
Evidence
People acquire new styles of behavior and change preexisting ones via two basic modes of influence. Through firsthand experience of trial and error, they learn from the positive and negative effects of their actions. Constraints of time, resources, and mobility can impose severe limits on the situations and activities that humans can explore in their own lived environments to acquire new knowledge, competencies, and worldviews. The second mode of influence, which operates through the power of social modeling, bypasses the trial-and-error method and vastly expands the available information for self-development and change (Bandura, 1986). Revolutionary advances in electronic communications and the development of entertainment-education allow large-scale social and lifestyle changes to be modeled and rapidly diffused worldwide, enabling people to transcend the confines of their physical locations (Bandura, 2006a; Braithwaite, 1994). — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2805
Categorization
Category: Definitional Content
- DEFINE: Introduces social modeling as a distinct mode of influence contrasted with firsthand trial-and-error learning.
Related
- Observational learning lets one model reach vast dispersed populations at once (similarity 0.86)
- A single social model can transmit behavior to vast dispersed populations at once (similarity 0.85)
- People adopt change when relatable models demonstrate it succeeds (similarity 0.84)
- Entertainment serials durably change social behavior across diverse global cultures (similarity 0.81)
- Learning mechanisms were conflated with actual practice in the media-violence debate. (similarity 0.80)
- Social networks sustain behavior change once media has first motivated it (similarity 0.79)