Case Application of Psychological Theory - Term Paper Example

Marc also had issues of attitude as revealed in his employment history. He was fired several times from his jobs because he could hardly relate to other employees. He then enrolled in Ecole Polytechnique in 1982, however, struggled to keep up with his night class. In December of 1989, he walked into Ecole polytechnique with a gun in his hand and shot 27 victims. Fourteen women were killed while thirteen others were injured. He shot and killed himself after the incident. The case of Marc Lepine as a murderer can be fully understood with the application of the social learning theory.

This theory which is proposed by Bandura emphasizes that behaviors are influenced by the interaction of the environment and the cognitive aspect of the learner. Behaviors are learned through association and interaction with other people present in the surrounding and through modeling. For behaviors to be learned successfully, the observer has to go through four processes namely attention, retention, reproduction and motivation. The imitator has to pay attention to the behavior she/he wants to copy to be able to code it in his memory.

This way, he/she can reproduce the acquired information into practice even with the absence of the model. Modeling method though is not applicable in all situations as there are some circumstances where practice is required for the observed behavior to be successfully put into action. Another assumption of social learning theory is the function of reinforcement. Behaviors which are either rewarded directly or indirectly are found to be easily imitated or modeled by the observer. Reviewing the life of Marc Lepine, one notes that it reflects that he learned his anti social behaviors including his tendency to kill from his association with the significant person, his father.

Although he was still young when he witnessed the behavior of his father who inflicted physical abuse on them, it provided Marc with the model pattern for his own life. Association with delinquent people especially the significant figures within the family circle is indicated as the strongest predictor of misbehavior in all age groups. Such concept is explained at length by Siegel (2007) in his Criminology book where he made a distinct example of adolescent cases. Siegel explained that a group that one belongs to exerts a powerful influence on their members to set the tone of their behaviors whether those behaviors are considered deviant or normal.

This holds true for any other group including family. This is the reason why mother and father figures are encouraged to provide a safe and nurturing environment for their children for them to live a healthy life and become a contributing asset in the society. However, in the case of Marc, his father replenished the opposite environment where he learned to hate, to abuse those who are considered easy target and to employ physical force to achieve his goal and to ameliorate his frustrations. The learned aggression behavior is supported with the study by Josephson (1987) regarding aggression among children with low aggressive behavior.

In his research involving boys in grades 2 and 3, he found out that participants who were exposed to violent movies are likely to develop aggressive behavior compared with boys who were subjected to non-violent movies. Such behavior is developed because content of the movie affects the emotion of