Vicarious Learning: Everything You Need to Know

Vicarious learning is a very useful social learning technique with many applications and benefits in several contexts. In this article, we will discuss what it is, its key benefits, examples, and all you need to know about vicarious learning as a useful tool to develop your academic and professional skills or those of your team members. 

Vicarious Learning Definition in Psychology: What is Vicarious Learning? 

Vicarious Learning is a term that was first mentioned in Bandura's Theory of Social Learning, and it has many definitions up to this date. However, all definitions agree it is about obtaining knowledge and new skills through the experiences of others while empathizing with their position. Unlike first-hand experiences, this type of learning is indirect and occurs through the successes and failures of others. As Bruner first stated (1986), “most of our encounters with the world are not direct encounters” (p. 122), suggesting that it is more likely to learn from indirect encounters with others. Lecturer and researcher on intercultural matters Fox (2003), also describes vicarious learning as using human imagination to learn and become motivated by others’ experiences. 

As such, vicarious learning starts at a very young age, when children learn from the experiences of their parents, family members, peers, and other people around them. It is a thoughtful and engaging process that involves observing the consequences of others’ actions and putting themselves in their shoes. It also involves judging others’ experiences and deciding whether to replicate the behavior or not. 

The Key Stages of Vicarious Learning

Based on Bandura’s Theory of Social Learning, vicarious learning has 4 stages:

1. Attention. The attention stage refers to the exposure of one’s behavior or in simpler words, the attention we give to someone’s behavior which is necessary for replicating or avoiding that behavior afterwards. 
2. Retention. Retention is all about remembering the behavior we have perceived from the demonstrator earlier. Remembering such behavior is essential for replicating it later as sometimes, a person may notice a certain behavior but not be able to recall and repeat it later. 
3. Reproduction. Reproduction is the stage that comes after initial attention and retention of the demonstrator’s behavior, where we choose to mimic such behavior in the same or similar manner to the original model. 
4. Motivation. Motivation refers to the willingness to replicate such behavior in the future, motivated by achieving positive outcomes or avoiding negative consequences on the observer’s part.

The Benefits of Vicarious Learning

Vicarious learning has several benefits in academic, lifelong learning, professional, and interpersonal contexts. Here are the key benefits:

• Makes the process of learning from experience easier and faster. From a very young age, we tend to learn things more easily by observing and interpreting the behaviors and experiences of others, rather than our own. In a professional context, we can also develop our professional skills more efficiently through actively perceiving and mimicking the experiences of others. 
• Enhances learning results through dialogue and prompting. In academic and learning environments, it has been found that vicarious learning, especially when students are asked to self-explain the presented materials or discuss them with their peers, is a more effective learning strategy compared to simple observation. 
• Boosts a team’s performance. As evidenced by “Performance Benefits Of Reciprocal Vicarious Learning In Teams” by Myers, learning from other team members’ experiences is essential for increasing the team’s performance. In interdependent working environments, reciprocity in vicarious learning is key to enhancing knowledge sharing and improving the team’s output.
• Boosts employee engagement, satisfaction, and retention rates. Social learning encourages employees to learn from each other’s experiences within the organization, which in turn enhances engagement, boosts employee satisfaction, and as a result, increases employees’ commitment to the organization they work for.
• Encourages innovation. As observers learn from the behavior and outcomes of others, they are more likely to adopt such behaviors based on their judgment and develop new creative ideas, models, and concepts, taking such observed behaviors to the next level of innovation. 

Minimizes risks and failure rates. Vicarious learning, as discussed earlier, is not only about mimicking certain behaviors to achieve a successful outcome, but it also includes learning from mistakes and failures to be able to avoid them in the future. This process is much more time and effort-efficient than finding undesirable strategies by trial and error.

Vicarious Learning Examples

Vicarious learning occurs in many contexts and settings – from childhood years to professional development and lifelong learning. Here are some examples of vicarious learning in different situations:

1. Peer mimicking. Peer mimicking is when a person learns a certain behavior and goes for a certain outcome they have learned from their peers. For example, if a child observes the way some peers in their class make friends with others during the break, they may try to copy such behavior to make friends themselves. 
2. Avoidance of punishment. An example of avoidance of punishment is a child observing the action of a sibling which results in punishment by parents. The other sibling avoids doing the same, fearing that they would be punished too. In corporate settings, employees may learn from other’s behavior resulting in penalization, and avoid doing the same to prevent repercussions. For example, they notice that a certain employee has a habit of turning up late and leaving earlier without notice, to which management responds with a warning. Other employees will arrive on time to avoid the negative outcome.
3. Watching interactive educational and tutorial videos. In the age of multimedia and the internet, watching videos and tutorials where experts or peers share their knowledge and interact with others is a great way to learn vicariously. For example, a therapist hosts a live webinar discussing ways to better understand one’s emotions and encourages others to share their experiences so everyone can learn from each other.
4. Examining and learning from others’ performance in games or sports. The coach or the players themselves may decide to examine the game tactics of a competitor to find their potential strengths and weaknesses and beat them at their own game. Likewise, a player or coach may closely observe and analyze the past failures of their team or those of a competing team to avoid failure in the future. 
5. Learning entrepreneurship strategies from stories and case studies. An aspiring entrepreneur may learn through case studies and stories of other successful or even failed entrepreneurs who shared their stories and strategies that led them to success or failure. 

Vicarious Learning Vs Observational Learning

Vicarious learning is often confused with observational learning – learning through direct observation, and even though there are some fundamental similarities between the two, there are also some differences between the two concepts. To understand the distinction, let us look at a comparison table between the two learning methods:

As we can see here, both learning concepts come from the same theory – Bandura’s Social Learning theory, which describes the process of learning by observing others. However, observational learning has a broader function and can often be unintentional whereas vicarious learning is more intentional and engaging as the observer mimics a certain behavior from others to achieve or prevent a certain outcome. Also, while both terms share the same three functions and stages – attention and observation, retention, and reproduction, only vicarious learning includes the function of motivation: the stage where the person desires to repeat a certain behavior motivated by observed outcomes. 

Vicarious Learning in the Age of Internet and AI

The spread of the World Wide Web and the recent emergence of AI has made vicarious learning much more accessible to millions of people – from individuals to informal teams and corporations. It occurs online in many different forms such as:

• On-demand or live video tutorials with live commentary and discussion of  personal or interpersonal experiences
• Influencer videos where the influencer shares a particular experience with their audience
• Forums focused on a specific niche or target audience e.g. college student forums, family life forums, professional development forums, etc. 
• Online meetings and live team discussions through various messenger applications. 
• Interactive multimedia presentations 
• Experience-based news and stories
• Interactive e-courses and lectures

The recent appearance of AI in the online scene has made the generation of such learning materials much easier and quicker. This, in turn, leads to increasingly vast amounts of content on any topic you might be interested in learning, and examining the content becomes ever more time-consuming. Finding the time to read a 20-page-long article or watch an hour-long video in today’s fast-paced environment can be a challenge, but thankfully, AI can also be used to summarize content so you can understand the main ideas shared in a piece of content without committing significant amounts of time to it. ReadPartner is a market leading tool for this purpose as it specializes in summarizing the content of various learning materials like videos, stories, and news for quicker and easier learning, saving you substantial amounts of time each time you use it. ReadPartner is free, so give it a try and start saving time now! Also available as a Chrome browser extension.

FAQ

What is the critical component of vicarious learning?

The critical component of vicarious learning is the motivation or desire to repeat a certain behavior learned through observing others’ experiences.

Does Vicarious learning involve learning from our own experiences?

No, it does not involve learning from our own experiences. Vicarious learning is learning from the experiences of others.

What are the major drawbacks and limitations of vicarious learning?

Vicarious learning can lead to the repetition of information without adding new insights or perspectives. Additionally, it does not work for everyone because some people find it easier to learn through direct experience rather than by observing others. While vicarious learning has many benefits in different contexts, these drawbacks make it a learning tactic that should be used when appropriate.

Conclusion

Vicarious learning is a way of learning new skills and gaining knowledge by observing the behavior and experiences of others and choosing to replicate or avoid them, which is motivated by the witnessed outcomes. Vicarious learning occurs in several forms and has several applications in different contexts – from early childhood and classroom environments to professional development and teamwork. It can make learning much easier and faster, increasing learning efficiency by improving information retention and excluding the need for each individual to take the trial-and-error approach.

References:

1. Bandura, A. (1977). Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs.
2. Bruner, J. S. (1986). Actual minds, possible worlds. Harvard University Press.
3. Choi, S., Lee, H., Lee, Y., & Kim, J. (2024, May). VIVID: Human-AI Collaborative Authoring of Vicarious Dialogues from Lecture Videos. In Proceedings of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp. 1-26).
4. Fox, F. F. (2003). Reducing intercultural friction through fiction: virtual cultural learning. International Journal of Intercultural Relations, 27(1), 99–123. https://doi.org/10.1016/s0147-1767(02)00064-0
5. Mayes, J. (2015). Still to learn from vicarious learning. E-Learning and Digital Media, 12(3-4), 361-371. https://doi.org/10.1177/2042753015571839
6. Myers, C. G. (2020). Performance benefits of reciprocal vicarious learning in teams. Academy of Management Journal, 64(3), 926–947. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2018.0875
7. Srivastava, S. S. (2016). Social learning of employee engagement. Loyola University Chicago.
8. Mayes, J. (2015). Still to learn from vicarious learning. E-Learning and Digital Media, 12(3-4), 361-371. https://doi.org/10.1177/2042753015571839
9. Why Students Learn More From Dialogue- Than Monologue-Videos: Analyses of Peer Interactions
   https://education.asu.edu/sites/default/files/lcl/why_students_learn_more_from_dialogue.pdf?utm_source=chatgpt.com