Imitation Throughout the Life Span and It's Resulting Effects on Society

IMITATION THROUGHOUT THE LIFE SPAN AND ITS RESULTING EFFECTS ON SOCIETY

Research in different fields of Psychological study including Developmental Psychology, Learning, and Social Psychology reveal that humans imitate other humans. In fact, throughout their lives, humans are raised, taught, and even encouraged to observe and subsequently imitate each other. Imitation can have extreme effects on society by inducing positive benefits or negative implications.

Although many promising arguments can be made on either side of the age old debate, research in Developmental Psychology suggests that nurture has a significant impact on development. In other words, the brain is sculpted by heredity, but it is also sculpted by experience. In fact, Jean Piaget’s studies on cognitive development lead to his proposal that children learn by assimilating all of their knowledge through experience into “schemas”, which they accommodate to fit new experiences. Therefore, young children are raised to build a foundation based on experience including the observation of others. Resultantly, parents and guardians have an extremely large effect on children as they raise them. For example, if David’s parents smoke, it is likely that David will grow up to be a smoker as well.

As children grow, they are thought to learn primarily by conditioning. However, humans can also learn without direct experience through observational learning. Humans learn through observational learning by observing and imitating others in a process called modeling. In fact, there are actually frontal lobe neurons called mirror neurons that fire when performing certain actions or when observing another doing so. Albert Bandura illustrated the concept of observational learning in his famous experiments involving the Bobo doll where some children were exposed to an aggressive model, while others were not. From his observations, Bandura was able to conclude that children who were exposed to the aggressive model...