| Kid shooting Bobo in the Badura experiments |
First, if you have not seen the orginal films of the children studied by Albert Bandura, one of the pioneers of Social-Cognitive (Learning) Theory, you have got to see these!
For those of you unfamiliary with Bandura's work on observational learning, the essence of the theory is that we do not have to practice a behavior in order to learn about it. In the famous aggression studies with children, Bandura dound that simply watching aggressive behavior performed by a research assistant through a window was enough to teach kids how to torture the plastic blow-up clown when they got the chance to do so. The key to the finding, though, is that children were able to determine whether their behavior was going to be rewarded or punished, and they were much more likely to beat up the doll if they had observed a reward connected to the aggression (and if you have not yet watched the cute little girls wailing away on the doll, click on the above link; it is worth the few minutes of viewing).
So, how does this all relate to the campaign? First, Donald Trump has learned through his rewards, (e.g., adultation at rallies, media saturation, votes, primary victories) that aggression and bullying pays off, and so he will not only continue to do it, he will do it in ways we cannot yet fully know. Until he loses a couple of contests that have no plausible alternate explanations (Cruz and Kasich home states, the oddness of the Iowa caucus, who cares about Mineesota, Alaska and Oklahoma anyway!), Trump will continue on the path of behavior that has rewarded him with his commanding current lead in the delegate count. So look for the "offense of the week" (well, maybe the "offense of the day") to continue, and to take turns in ways most of us cannot imagine.
But the spiral is even worse. Trump's supporters are essentially modelling Trump himself, amping up the language, brazenly hassling people who don't seem to fit in, wearing tee-shirts and sporting signs that they would not necessarily want their loved ones to see firsthand, and getting aggressive with the press, protestors and anyone else that might please Trump. And Trump feeds off this aggression. And the spiral continues...
Even Marco Rubio's unwise decision to mimic Trump by mocking him in ways that are almost as childish as the original buyy in the race, can be understood through this lens: he probably assumed that since Trump is using insults to win, he could, too. Alas, Rubio's record, reputation and notariety precluded him from taking advantage of, as I wrote earlier, the inoculation effect, and it hurt him instead. And what did he do in response? He changed his tune and stopped the aggression (remember, assumption of punishment reduced aggression with the kids in Bandura's experiments). Of course, that did no good either.
The real lesson for Rubio is that modeling Obama was probably not a good idea either. Rbio is no Obama; if he was, he would have realized that and waited another cycle before running for the White House. Now he may have to become a Fox news contributor to make ends meet. Good thing for Rubio we have crony conservatism!
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