Criticisms of Social Theory
Psychology: AQA A Level, topic 10.1.9
Criticisms of Social Learning Theory
Like the other theories of gender development, there are a couple of weaknesses.
Effects not causes
- The first weakness is the fact that the social learning theory does not attempt to explain how the gender typical behaviours developed in the first place.
- The theory only explains how it propagates from one generation to the next, not where gender behaviours/roles originated from.
Smith and Daglish (1977)
- The second weakness has evidence from a study conducted by Smith and Daglish (1977).
- They conducted a questionnaire on parent’s views of gender appropriate behaviour.
Smith and Daglish (1977) findings
- They found that gender typical behaviour of one to two year olds did not differ from parents with strong stereotyped views of gender roles compared to parents with less strong views.
- There was no correlation between parental stereotypical views of gender and to what degree their children exhibited gender typical behaviour.