Daniel Robles
Professor Margaryan
Class – CRJ 102-110W
Date – March 26, 2024
The summary of social learning theory describes how people overserve actions based on other people they look up to please them. For example, when a child sees their parents watering the flowers every morning, they’ll observe every detail and would do the same thing to get recognition and compliments.
Tommy Shakur Ross’s involvement in gangs and crimes gives some examples of the social learning theory. In his rebellious stage, Shakur decided to join a gang called the Eight Tray and well his gang is kind of like his second family. In 9:17 – 10:15 of the podcast, Shakur explains how he would say his gang members doing violent crimes like selling drugs or driving lowriders, Shakur observed their behavior and wanted to reach higher delinquent activities like stealing and fighting in school and he diffidently got recognition and applause from his gang so as you can see this is an example of social learning theory, plus he was a kid and kids copy people older than them.
Another example around 10:30 – 11:08 talks about the war against crips and blood. Sometimes blood attacked crips, other times crips attack blood and it would go back and forth repeatedly so Shakur who was still 13 years old joined the war because that’s what his gang was doing and if Shakur decided to stay away from the war, it would ruin his reputation.
While social learning theory helps understand why Shakur acted this way with his gang, it didn’t explain why he didn’t study the behavior of his family. At the beginning of the podcast, it told his family with religious people, his father was a Baptist minister and his mother was a nurse. If social learning means people copying the behavior of others, why didn’t Shakur copy the behavior of his parents? In his childhood his father wanted him to follow in his footsteps. So maybe social learning theory doesn’t always apply to everything. The theory depends upon the person if they are willing to learn from others, like for Shakur was more interested in karate and football which are physical sports, and it is not what his family wanted for him.
