Observational Learning

According the class discussion, observational learning is a learning behaviors by seeing someone else do them. This idea has been around since the Bobo Doll experiment. Observational learning is going on with individuals even when they don’t realize it. The most common time one will notice observational learning is with a parent and their child. Children, at a young age, watch their primary care taker and eventually start to copy that behavior whether it is good or bad. For example, my dad was always fixing up the house. If he wasn’t mowing the lawn then he would be fixing something that was broken. I would watch him work around the house and since I’m a daddy’s girl I tried to be just like him. One day, I tried to cut the grass and got gasoline everywhere! I wanted to do everything he could do. Learning behavior however isn’t always a good thing. Children can pick up bad habits like screaming, punching things, using verbal or physical abuse to handle problems. The primary care taker must be cautious of what a child see and hears.

Defense Mechanism

Freud came up with the idea of defense mechanisms. This is how a person handles situations. There are seven possible mechanisms that are talked about in the book such as denial, repression, reaction formation, rationalization, intellectualization, sublimation, and displacement. In day to day life, I see many people using these mechanisms. For example, my youngest brother is ten years old. I can tell he likes a girl at school because he will pick on her just so he can get her attention. Anytime I tell him that he likes her, his face turns red and then he says “Nuh uh she’s a smarty pants.” Many people would say that the way my brother is acting is how any elementary school boy would act when he has a crush. Although they are right, Freud would say that my brother is displaying the defense mechanism reaction formation. It doesn’t matter what age someone is, Freud’s defense mechanisms are used by every person nearly every day.