PSYC 216-A: Social Learning Lecture Notes

Excellent Questions: - What occurs if X doesn’t happen? - What is the application of X in real-life scenarios? - What actions can be taken to improve or change X?
Quick Responses: - Results are based on normal distributions and should not be seen as hard facts for every child. - Real-life situations are complex. - Children's differing responses are not always indicative of broader issues. - Acknowledgment of multiple variables influencing real-life situations. - Focus on understanding the mechanisms and sequences of behavior rather than merely memorizing specific ages. - Example: Average height of people is approximately 70 inches.

Humans are innately predisposed to learn through imitation.
Important Questions: - At what age do we begin to imitate? - Imitation begins as early as 12 days old. - Are imitated behaviors genuinely learned? - By 14 months, yes, imitated behaviors are recognized as learned. - Who are the primary models for imitation? - Individuals imitate adults, peers, and models seen on television. - Are there situations where we do not imitate? - We may refrain from imitating behaviors if they lead to distress or negative emotions in others.
Bonus Facts: - Infants have an inherent motivation to imitate other individuals.

Definition of Social Norms: - Norms are standards of behavior (rules) that indicate appropriate actions for individuals in society.

Social norms significantly affect human thought, reasoning, and behavior, often more than individuals realize.
Components of Social Norms: - Involve both conscious awareness and subconscious processes.

Standards of Behavior: - Norms carry normative force, guiding the “correctness” of behavior. - Norms are agent-neutral, applying to all individuals uniformly. - They are context-specific and necessitate a certain level of agreement among individuals. - Norms can be arbitrary, lacking a logical or moral foundation. - There are complexities in group contexts.

Five Important Questions: 1. How do we ascertain when children comprehend norms? 2. When do children grasp formal social norms? 3. When do children understand informal social norms? 4. When do children realize social norms are context-dependent and require agreement? 5. What potential errors or misunderstandings can occur?

Research by Rakoczy, Warneken, & Tomasello (2008): - Age Group: 2- and 3-year-olds. - Focus on spontaneous normative responses: protests, critiques, and teaching behaviors observed. - Experimental Condition: Demonstration of a correct model. - Incorrect Model: Display of inappropriate behavior in a video format (not shareable). - Test Phase - Age 3 and Age 2: Children exhibited protests in reaction to violations of norms.

Results from Rakoczy, Warneken, & Tomasello (2008): - Both 2- and 3-year-olds protested more in the experimental vs. control conditions. - 3-year-olds protested more than 2-year-olds, indicating an awareness of formal rules and enforcement on peers.

Research Question: Do children comprehend informal norms?
Study by Rakoczy (2008) focusing on children aged 2 and 3 years and their understanding of informal/pretend rules. - Game and test phases confirmed children's ability to recognize and enforce informal norms. - An example: A child protesting, “No, you can’t eat that! It’s soap!” - Protest behaviors were observed to increase with age, illustrating deeper understanding of pretend play and informal norms.

Research by Wyman et al. (2009): - Evaluated understanding among 3-year-olds in relation to agreement and context within social norms. - Study 1 (Agreement): Children protested when a character agreed to engage in play but did not follow the agreed norms. - Study 2 (Context): Children protested when characters played at the wrong context even when they acted correctly for different tables.

Children acknowledge that social norms are context-specific and dependent on whether individuals have agreed to follow them.

Overgeneralizations with Groups: - Stereotypes, intrinsic attributions, descriptive-to-prescriptive (D2P) errors.
Understanding D2P Errors: - Children often fail to distinguish between descriptive norms (how things usually are) and prescriptive norms (how things should be), leading to biases in judgment based on group behaviors. - Effects largely impact views on conformity and can lead to harsh penalties for deviation from normative group behaviors.

Roberts et al. (2017) Study**: Explored children and adults’ views on conformity, showing greater disapproval of non-conformity among peers as age increased.
Results indicated: Children often conflate descriptive norms with prescriptive norms and generalize agreement to others solely on group membership.

Social learning is a rapid and versatile method for acquiring knowledge about the world.
Infants begin the process of imitation and learning from social models within their first year of life.
Normative understanding develops in toddlers, who begin to enforce norms contextually.
Children demonstrate a tendency to misinterpret descriptive norms as prescriptive, leading to significant impacts on perception and behavior.
Norms shape individual behavior and social interactions.