Vicarious rewards and punishments shape whether learned aggression is performed

Evidence

Acquisition of aggressive styles of conduct enables individuals to behave aggressively. However, self-regulatory factors, operating as motivators, inhibitors, and disinhibitors, play an influential role in whether individuals will put into practice what they have learned. In addition to cultivating competencies, modeling influences have strong motivational effects. They operate through depictions of the functional value of the exhibited conduct (Bandura, 1986). Vicarious motivators are rooted in outcome expectations formed from information conveyed by the rewarding and punishing outcomes of modeled courses of action. Seeing others gain desired outcomes through their actions can create outcome expectancies that function as positive incentives; observed punishing outcomes can create negative outcome expectancies that function as disincentives. When aggressive behavior that is ordinarily disapproved of elicits no evident consequences, the implied permissiveness for it increases such behavior. These motivational effects are governed by observers’ belief in their ability to perform the modeled behavior, their perception of the modeled actions as producing favorable or adverse consequences, and their judgment that similar or unlike consequences would result if they themselves were to engage in similar activities. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 762

Categorization

• XREF: Central mechanism: when harmful policy advocates elicit no evident costs and are seen gaining desired outcomes, implied permissiveness rises — directly corroborates reader’s vault claims about how ordinary people rationalize supporting Islamophobic/racist policy.
• DEFINE: Establishes the precise mechanism of vicarious motivators and the ‘implied permissiveness’ pathway — the conceptual core the reader’s synthesis depends on.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 762