Imitation

Category: Fields of research

Imitation is a model of learning that happens through observation and isn’t conditioned on the system of punishments and rewards.

Influence of Imitation on the Child’s Socialization

James Mark Baldwin viewed the development of the self as a process between the self and the outside world. Baldwin saw the processes of "ejection", "adaptation," and "imitation" as key to building the self. Georg H. Mead argued that there are two phases in the process of socialization of a child, through which his self is formed. In the earliest period of development, the child is in the "play" phase. During the "play", the child internalizes and imitates certain roles that are related to various social acts. In this phase, it takes on various social roles by taking on, during the play, the role of doctor, warrior, mother, father, or any other role.

Albert Bandura, in Social Learning Theory (1977), investigates the determinants and mechanisms of observational learning (imitation). Bandura divided the models that people orient themselves to into three types: living (the behavior of a real person), symbolic (e.g., a character from a movie), and verbal (the behavior of a person in a story or novel). He believes that in the second half of the twentieth century, the importance of symbolic models increased due to the increase in the availability of technology and electronic media. He argues that imitation can lead to the adoption of new responses and the facilitation or inhibition of previously existing responses. A child will copy the behavior of observed models who are rewarded and restraines from imitating models that are punished.

Influence of Imitation on Society

Gabriel Tarde believed that the process of imitation (predisposition to act acquired during socialization) is a factor that can explain the difference between high and low crime rates in a given population. Social factors that encourage the imitation of criminal behavior include living in overcrowded suburbs or staying in prison. Tarde extended the process of imitation to the whole of society and thus came to methodological individualism, which serves as the basis for his macro-social theory.

Maksim Kovalevsky stressed the importance of the leadership manifested in individuals with great mental and creative energy and great initiative, as it enables the emergence ("invention") of new forms of behavior, which through imitation and adaptation spread throughout society and turn into social institutions.

Walter Bagehot argued that people in the "preliminary" stage of civilization were directed by imitation, customs, and religion, which all reinforced conformity and precluded novel variations from emerging which brought a period of long stagnation.

References:

Baldwin. Elements of Psychology (1893);

- Mental Development in the Child and the Race (1895);

- Social and Ethical Interpretations in Mental Development (1897);

- Story of the Mind (1898);

Chodorow. The Reproduction of Mothering: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Gender (1978);

Gellner. Plough, Sword and the Book: The Strucuture of Human History (1988);

Giddings. The Principles of Sociology (1896);

- The Theory of Socialization (1897);

Mead. Mind, Self, and Society: From the Standpoint of a Social Behaviorist (1934);

- The Philosophy of the Act (1938);

Pareto. Sociological Writings (1966);