Vicarious Conditioning

Vicarious conditioning can be defined as learning by observing the reactions of others to an environmental stimulus that is salient to both the observer and the model. The saliency of the stimulus is characterized by its relevance (e.g., fear relevance) and ability to produce emotional arousal. Vicarious conditioning is a particularly important process in observational learning. One effect of vicarious conditioning may be increased imitation of the model by the observer, in that observers imitate successful models. The greater the positive reinforcement of the model's reaction, the more the observer tends to imitate those responses. It is reasonable to suppose that the primary way vicarious conditioning works is through the assumption on the part of the observer that “If I do that, I will get rewarded (or punished) too.” There are four primary factors that are thought to impact the magnitude of vicarious conditioning: (1) attention to critical features of the stimulus and model's reactions, (2) memory of the modeled behaviors, (3) practice of the modeled behaviors, and (4) incentives or punishment associated with the modeled behaviors. However, other factors that likely play a role include the model's status, goal setting, and perceived self-efficacy.

The mechanisms involved in the vicarious conditioning of emotional responses are similar to those of direct classical conditioning and involve the organism attempting to detect the causal structure of its environment. However, the distinction between vicarious conditioning and classical conditioning has been based on findings (e.g., with phobic patients) that suggest that many people with intense fears have no known traumatic conditioning history with regard to the object of their fear. This has led to the speculation that many fears and phobias are acquired vicariously, that is, simply through observing someone else behave fearfully with some object or in a certain situation.

In the study of human fear origins, children and adolescents have attributed the onset of their fears to vicarious and instructional factors, although these indirect sources of fear were often combined with direct conditioning experiences. Boys report more direct and vicarious conditioning sources than girls do, and vicarious and instructional sources are endorsed more frequently by children than adolescents. Albert Bandura's Bobo doll experiments have received the most attention with regard to the study of vicarious conditioning in children. His research demonstrated that kindergartners who observed a video of a female experimenter beating up a blowup doll would mimic the experimenter almost exactly when subsequently allowed free play in a room with toys that included a blowup doll. This study was important because it demonstrated that children would modify their behaviors without first being rewarded for the target behavior.

Research of laboratory-reared rhesus monkeys, which do not show an innate fear of snakes, has demonstrated that observation of a wild monkey reacting fearfully to a snake will produce a fear of snakes in the lab monkeys. The fears occurred when the lab monkeys were later assessed alone and were enduring. This vicarious acquisition of fear for monkeys was evident even when the monkeys watched the model on a video. This suggests that the model does not have to [Page 1084]be physically present to exert an influence on the observer. Further research suggests that the monkeys can be inoculated against the vicarious fear conditioning. Laboratory monkeys that are first exposed to a model that is not afraid of snakes are unaffected by the fearful models.

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