Vicarious Reinforcement

Vicarious reinforcement occurs when (a) an individual observes another person (a model) behave in a certain way and experience a consequence perceived as desirable by the observer, and (b) as a result, the observer behaves as the model did. For example, suppose a shy child at school observes another student being praised by the teacher for speaking up in class. The observed student is the reinforced model. If the shy child would like to be praised by the teacher and therefore personally speaks up in class in the future, vicarious reinforcement has occurred. Educators commonly use vicarious reinforcement to shape the behavior of students.

Psychologist Albert Bandura popularized the concept of vicarious reinforcement through his theory of human behavior, social cognitive theory (sometimes called social learning theory). Social cognitive theory proposes that human behavior is the outcome of [Page 1001]interactions of cognitions, behavior, and environment. An important environmental influence on an individual's behavior is the model set by others. Social cognitive theory suggests that a great deal of learning occurs through observation of a model's behavior and the consequences of the behavior. Bandura labeled this phenomenon observational learning.

Researchers of social learning have demonstrated the effects of vicarious reinforcement through experimental manipulations. For example, studies involving children receiving social reinforcement (praise) for their performances on experimental tasks have shown that other children who observe the social reinforcement try harder at the tasks.

Vicarious reinforcement can also occur symbolically. That is, rather than actually observing the reinforced behavior occurring, individuals can experience vicarious reinforcement by merely acquiring knowledge about another individual who has performed a behavior and benefited. Examples of this include (a) hearing a personal anecdote from an individual who has benefited from engaging in a behavior and (b) observing an individual receiving an award for an outstanding performance. Some schools systematically apply symbolic vicarious reinforcement by giving individual students awards at student assemblies or commending the students in the school newsletter.

Studies of symbolic vicarious reinforcement have shown that it can affect behavior. For instance, one study showed that vicarious reinforcement, delivered symbolically via personal anecdotes from individuals on a video, increased observers' use of a recommended method of coping with stressors.

There are three conditions that enhance the likelihood of vicariously rewarded behavior being imitated by an observer: (1) the model is liked, (2) the model is similar to the observer (e.g., the same sex), and (3) the model is of higher status than the observer. Applying these principles to increase students' efforts to work hard in class, teachers might praise a well-liked student who has just worked hard. It might help if the teachers praised a boy as well as a girl and a good student as well as a struggling student so that most students would see the praised student as similar in important ways to themselves. Finally, the teachers might talk about how hard they worked in class when they were students and thereby use themselves as high-status models.

Vicarious reinforcement works, at least in part, through expectancies similar to those involved in operant conditioning and rule-governed behavior. Operant conditioning involves the increase or reduction of a behavior as a result of its consequences. For example, if a student receives a compliment for working hard on a school assignment, the student will tend to associate hard work with praise and feeling good and will be more likely to work hard on assignments in the future. Rule-governed behavior occurs when someone simply tells a person that the person will receive a reward for a specific behavior, and as a result, the person shows the behavior. For example, a teacher might tell the class that everyone who submits homework on time will receive 15 minutes to play an exciting computer game. If students complete the homework because of their expectation of obtaining the computer time, they are engaging in rule-governed behavior. The expectancies involved in operant conditioning and rule-governed behavior play a similar role in vicarious reinforcement. When individuals learn through observation or verbal description about specific behavior leading to positive consequences, they tend to expect positive consequences if they engage in the behavior.

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