Brian might learn not to stand too close to a soccer goal because he saw another spectator move away after getting whacked on the head by a wayward soccer ball. The other spectator stopped standing close to the soccer goal because of operant conditioning—getting clobbered by the ball acted as positive punishment for standing too close. Brian was indirectly, or vicariously, conditioned to move away.

The person best known for research on observational learning is psychologist Albert Bandura, who did some landmark experiments showing that children who watched adults behaving aggressively were more likely to behave aggressively themselves. His most famous experiment was the Bobo doll study. Bandura let a group of kindergarteners watch a film of an adult violently attacking an inflatable plastic toy shaped like Bobo the Clown by hitting it, sitting on it, hammering it, and so forth. He then let the children into a room with Bobo dolls. The children precisely imitated the adult’s behavior, gleefully attacking Bobo. Their behavior was a type of observational learning.