Social modeling via serial dramas can drive large-scale behavior change

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 (#expands, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Seriality makes people model behavior on an imagined other that never actually exists. — Fredric Jameson, Marxism and Form, 498; Daytime soap operas embedded testimonials by trusted story characters directly into plots — Tim Wu, The Attention Merchants, 328; A single social model can transmit new behaviors to vast populations at once. (+11 more)

Broader Connections

• Social modeling through electronic media accelerates behavior change beyond firsthand experience #expands (0.93) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2805