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Having presented the codes, themes and illustrative quotes from the interview transcripts, these will now be discussed in further detail.

Attention

Being present and involved

Despite needing to be physically present and able to see the action some students reported feeling in the way like 'lemons' or 'ghosts', suggesting they needed their participation to be legitimised. They described that legitimacy as coming from being given a specific role, such as taking a history from a patient. Anita, for example, described being asked by a consultant to sit and chat with a patient whilst she ate her breakfast. For the student this proved to be a rich and memorable learning experience. This purposeful role gave her an involved perspective from which to observe and maintained her attention. Lave and Wenger [ 14] refer to the way that newcomers to a community of practice learn by participating as legitimate peripheral participation. But opportunities for legitimate peripheral participation need to be created for medical students and the value of this should not be underestimated as the quotes from students' demonstrated.

Teachers were also aware of this need to actively involve students, particularly those less confident ones, but due to time pressures this was not always possible. Most teachers agreed that some role models were easy to identify - what Abigail referred to as 'superstars'. But there was an acknowledgement that other role models might be more useful, particularly in the early stages. Therefore, as has been found in other research [ 8] signposting less obvious behaviours, such as at what point and how junior doctors involve senior colleagues was important.

Continuity of and exposure to role models

Barriers to paying attention included lack of continuous exposure to any one role model or patient, meaning that students could not truly analyse role model's behaviours or evaluate the impact of that behaviour on others. Attending to patterns in role models' practice takes time and for some the short phases that tend to characterise medical students' clinical rotations made this difficult.

Where role models had facilitated more continuous observations of their practice the educational value of this could be recognised by students. For some students, their experience aligned well with Gioia and Manz assertion that "if an observer is to learn effectively from a model it is important for the model to be credible, reasonably successful, clearly display the behaviour to be learned, and otherwise facilitate the attention process." ([ 15]: 528).

Teachers also commented on the fragmented nature of clinical rotations. Difficulty in identifying patterns in behaviour and forming relationships created by lack of continuous exposure to role models seemed to be disruptive and demotivating for both students and teachers. Being aware of these challenges to attendance and opportunities to observe was important. Faculty also needed to be present in order for students to observe their practice, although as Iris pointed out, clinical teachers were still role modelling even if absent.

Aligned values

The students reported paying close attention when they observed a behaviour that aligned with their views of what was important about being a doctor. For Emily, the positive reactions she observed from her role model's patients were more important than them having a long list of publications.

The artificial separation of scientific and medical knowledge from skills and attitudes within medical curricula can be confusing and students saw clinical rotations as a place to learn how to bring these elements of a doctor's practice together, although they found it difficult.

Retention

There is an enormous amount for a learner to take on board when in a clinical setting and they cannot possibly be expected to retain everything they observe. In order to avoid becoming overwhelmed learners seek cues to work out what is important to retain and develop strategies for doing so.

Learning the language

Students spoke about comprehending and retaining the unfamiliar clinical language that they heard their role models use. This sometimes involved looking it up later or consulting peers.

Particularly useful role models deliberately helped students to learn the language and develop the way they communicated in the clinical setting.

Understanding thought processes

Students talked about how they valued their role models giving insight into their thought processes as this enabled them to understand the reasoning behind the behaviours they were observing, including coping with uncertainty, and helped them to make sense of and retain the particular learning point.

Liam, who like other students talked about the importance of being able to relate to their role models, attributed this relatability, in part, to him and his role models thinking alike. This seems connected to the point made earlier about the attractiveness of aligned values between role models and observers.

Meaningful reflection

Reflection is widely acknowledged as aiding development, but how do learners make use of reflection when learning from their role models? Even though Jason claimed not to be 'a fan of formal reflection' he had clearly developed a critically reflective approach to help him extract personal value from what he had observed and imitate aspects of it before deciding what to retain.

Stefan also talked about the importance of authentic reflection and the role of teachers in creating space and support for students to evaluate what has been observed in clinical settings.

Writing it down

Liam described a particularly systematic approach to aid retention and processing of what had been observed, clearly guided by his role model.

Such strategies were encouraged and signposted by teachers, with Melanie referring to use of an advanced organiser [ 16] to help students consciously retain what they observed. She described an example in which she asked students who were observing her on a busy labour ward to write down a few things they noticed her doing or questions she asked the patient and then, importantly, got them to reflect on why they noticed these specific things or why they thought them important. Facilitating this metacognitive process, whereby students are required to think about what and how they are learning through observation, may also enable teachers to reinforce or 'correct' important take away messages.

Reproduction

Opportunity to practice

The opportunity for hands-on practice has been reported as lacking from some clinical-based learning experiences [ 17] In our study students talked about being given the opportunity to put into practice the behaviours and strategies that they had observed in their role models. Some needed help to recognise opportunities or to be given permission to take advantage of opportunities and to participate in a legitimate and meaningful way.

Giving students opportunity to legitimately participate in the team may involve considering the roles and expectations of the existing clinical team.

Most students recognised the need to be proactive about identifying and creating their own opportunities for practice and some had strategies for arranging these.

Students' also highlighted the value of being supported by a role model to identify in advance, in a systematic way, tasks and skills that they could learn through modelling and observation with opportunity for practice.

Feedback

When referring to opportunities to put into practice the techniques that they had observed, students highlighted the value of feedback that both reinforced desired behaviours and suggested aspects for development, especially where it was highly contextualised and immediate.

Shivani talked about making use of the student perspective and adopting a more dialogic approach to feedback [ 18] on what has been observed in way that could offer suggestions for development for both teachers and students.

Motivation

Feedback

Finally Bandura argued that if students are to learn from and reproduce the behaviours that they observe in their role models they need to be motivated to do so. For many students this was a question of direct reinforcement, whether this was a self-regulated process involving perceptions of 'wanting to please' or further reinforced by direct, positive feedback, including more independence.

Observing other's responses - vicarious reinforcement and punishment

Two further interesting and useful concepts from Bandura's social learning theory are vicarious reinforcement and vicarious punishment. Bandura proposed that when observing others we not only learn from their behaviour but also from the reactions of other people to the role model's behaviour. This is potentially a very efficient way to learn as it allows us to learn from others' mistakes. Our student interviewees identified a number of examples of being vicariously reinforced or punished and described how the reactions of patients, colleagues or fellow students influenced their decisions to reproduce behaviours they observed. For example, Liam, who was vicariously reinforced having closely observed this paediatrician, chose to adopt his communication technique as a result of the calming effect it appeared to have on children.

Conversely an example of vicarious punishment refers to what Jason considered to be brusque treatment of a patient. He was vicariously punished by the interaction between a role model and patient and as a result talked about wanting to deliberately avoid reproducing this behaviour in his own practice because of the patient's reaction.

Jason also highlighted barriers that interruptions in exposure to patients and clinicians poses for students wanting to convert observation into practice. It appears to be important to create opportunities for students to observe outcomes of interactions (or for them to be discussed), as well as seeing the behaviour that led to them. Students reported receiving mixed messages about appropriate behaviour through vicarious reinforcement. As Iris commented the less desirable behaviours observed in clinical settings can have a powerful influence, a view supported by Gibson [ 5], who highlights the value of learning from negative traits as well as positive aspects of role models. Furthermore Bucher and Stelling [ 19] found, to their surprise, that rather than identifying complete roles models amongst their senior colleagues, as had been assumed, medical students actively identified specific attributes to emulate and to reject, in a process of creating a vision of their 'ideal selves'. Clinical teachers recognised that students made decisions about who were useful role models on the basis of vicarious reinforcement. in the form of successful clinical outcomes, and/or positive reactions from patients and colleagues. Stefan spoke about how students might use clinical outcomes to judge the value of a particular behaviour when deciding whether to adopt or adapt them.

Reciprocating

Student also saw satisfaction and reward in being part of the reciprocal role model cycle themselves and referred regularly to the culture of peer support in medical school.

In terms of closing the reciprocal loop Liam, for example, also talked about how he sent a letter, email or card to his role models to thank them.

However, in general it is unclear how aware role models are of the influence they have on those observing them and indeed how they could be more effective. Clinical teachers commented that they seldom received direct feedback on the impact of their role modelling but Shivani recalled that students had commented on how she had interacted with a patient thus highlighting for her the value medical students derived from being able to closely observe a role model in action. Feedback on how role models have influenced those around them is potentially an important of untapped source of evaluation data.

Limitations

Whilst this paper has emphasised the benefits of modelling and observational learning, students also highlighted the limitations. This included that the ability to imitate the actions of others and carry out clinical tasks might not be accompanied by underpinning clinical knowledge or rationale in the mind of the learner.

Another limitation is created by the lack of constructive alignment [ 20] between the formal undergraduate medical curricula, often with an emphasis on gaining knowledge and exam-based assessment, and the authentic, skills-based learning in the clinical setting. This resulted in some learners prioritising revision for their exams over taking the opportunity to learn from observation in the clinical setting.

Finally the unfamiliar and haphazard nature of observational learning opportunities in the clinical settings proved challenging for students to identify and follow to their logical conclusion thus limiting the learning process that Bandura describes. Even when student interviewees described successful learning having taken place it became apparent that they were often not in control of, or even conscious of, the process occurring, let alone able to guide themselves through the four stages identified by Bandura.

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A skill to be worked at: using social learning theory to explore the process of learning from role models in clinical settings - BMC Medical Education

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Background Role modelling is widely accepted as being a highly influential teaching and learning method in medical education but little attention is given to understanding how students learn from role models. This study focuses on role modelling as an active, dynamic process, involving observational learning and aims to explore the process involved, including strategies that learners and medical teachers use to support this.

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Reproduced, with permission, from: Stern, P. C., O. R. Young, and D. Druckman. 1992.Global environmental change: Understanding the human dimensions. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.
Human Consequences and Responses Since before recorded history, environmental changes have affected things people value. In consequence, people have migrated or changed their ways of living as polar ice advanced and retreated, endured crop failures or altered their crops when temperature and rainfall patterns changed, and made numerous other adjustments in individual and collective behavior. Until very recently, people have responded to global phenomena as if they were local, have not organized their responses as government policies, and have not been able to respond by deliberately altering the course of the global changes themselves. Things are different now from what they have been for millennia.

This chapter examines the range of human consequences of, and responses to, global environmental change. We begin by developing the concept of human consequences and showing why, to understand them, it is critical to understand the variety of human responses to global change. We then offer a framework for thinking about human responses and discuss the pivotal role of conflict. The next section examines three cases that illustrate many of the major factors influencing the human consequences of global change. The following sections describe the human systems that are affected by or respond to global change, and how they interrelate. We conclude by offering some general principles for research and some research implications.

UNDERSTANDING HUMAN CONSEQUENCES

Many human actions affect what people value. One way in which the actions that cause global change are different from most of these is that the effects take decades to centuries to be realized. This fact causes many concerned people to consider taking action now to protect the values of those who might be affected by global environmental change in years to come. But because of uncertainty about how global environmental systems work, and because the people affected will probably live in circumstances very much different from those of today and may have different values, it is hard to know how present-day actions will affect them. To project or forecast the human consequences of global change at some point in the relatively distant future, one would need to know at least the following:

--the future state of the natural environment,

--the future of social and economic organization,

--the values held by the members of future social groups,

--the proximate effects of global change on those values, and

--the responses that humans will have made in anticipation of global change or in response to ongoing global change.

These elements form a dynamic, interactive system (Kates, 1971, 1985b; Riebsame et al., 1986). Over decades or centuries, human societies adapt to their environments as well as influence them; human values tend to promote behavior consistent with adaptation; and values and social organization affect the way humans respond to global change, which may be by changing social organizations, values, or the environment itself.

This complex causal structure makes projecting the human consequences of global change a trickier task than is sometimes imagined. It is misleading to picture human impacts as if global change were like a meteorite striking an inert planet, because social systems are always changing and are capable of anticipation. So, for example, an estimate of the number of homes that would be inundated by a one-meter rise in sea level and the associated loss of life and property may be useful for alerting decision makers to potentially important issues, but it should not be taken as a prediction, because humans always react. Before the sea level rises, people may migrate, build dikes, or buy insurance, and the society and economy may have changed so that people's immediate responses--and therefore the costs of global change--may be different from what they would be in the present.

One may imagine human consequences as the output of a matrix of scenarios. Assume that four sets of scenarios are developed for the futures of the natural environment, social and economic organization, values, and policies. Joining together all combinations of one scenario from each set, and adding assumptions about people's immediate responses, would generate an extensive set of grand scenarios. The human consequences of global change could then be defined as the difference between the state of humanity at the end of one grand scenario and the state of humanity at the end of a base case or reference scenario with a different natural-environment component. By this definition, a particular change in the natural environment has different consequences depending on the scenarios assumed for society, values, and responses.

Building these scenarios, identifying the most probable ones, and assessing their outcomes would be an overwhelming analytic task. Rather than trying to set a research agenda for that task, we undertake in this chapter a less demanding but still very difficult task: to focus on human responses to global change broadly conceived. We do not discuss ways to improve forecasts of the state of the natural environment; that topic is outside the range of human dimensions. Neither do we devote much attention to improving forecasts of social and economic organization or of human values, even though these topics clearly belong to the social sciences and are critical to understanding the effects of global change. We bypass these issues because the need for improved social, economic, and political forecasting is generic in the social sciences, and addressing this broad need would take us far beyond our charge to focus on human-environment interactions. We offer only limited discussion of how future global change might proximally affect what humans value, because the variety of possible global changes and the uncertainty about the effects of each make it far too difficult to go into detail. Instead, we review basic knowledge about how human systems respond to external stresses, in the context of discussing human responses.

In our judgment, understanding human responses is key to understanding the human consequences of global change. We do not mean to downplay the importance of certain kinds of research that do not focus explicitly on responses. Two such research traditions, in particular, are highly relevant. The impact-assessment tradition involves projecting the human consequences of a range of natural-environment scenarios under given assumptions about human response. The tradition of post hoc case analysis involves assessing the actual human outcomes after past environmental changes land given the responses that actually occurred), in the hope of drawing more general conclusions. Research in these traditions, combined with analysis of human response, can offer valuable insights into the human consequences of global change. We discuss that research as appropriate in this chapter and in Chapter 5.

SOME DIMENSIONS OF HUMAN RESPONSE

The human responses relevant to global change differ along several dimensions. We consider the following analytic distinctions useful for thinking about the range of responses available.

Responses to Experienced Versus Anticipated Change

People and social institutions may respond to environmental change as it is experienced (post facto) or as it is anticipated. (1) In the past, people responded mainly to experienced environmental change; only in very recent history, because of increasing scientific knowledge, has there been any rational basis for anticipatory responses. Policy makers and others are now faced with a variety of options, some of which involve anticipatory action and some of which depend on awaiting the experience of global change.

Deliberate Responses Versus Actions with Incidental Effects

Some human actions can be taken deliberately in response to global change. For instance, people can build dikes to keep out rising seas or reduce greenhouse gas emissions to mitigate global warming. Human actions can also affect human responses to global change incidentally to their intended purposes. For example, European settlement of the Americas gave Europeans and, later, others access to a wider variety of food crops, making human survival less dependent, at least in principle, on a small number of staples that might be vulnerable to altered growing conditions caused by environmental change. World markets have subsequently reduced the number of major staple foods so that, in practice, people may eat no larger a variety of foods than before (Plotkin, 1988). High taxes on gasoline in Europe and Japan, enacted for reasons unrelated to the global environment, encouraged development and purchase of small, fuel-efficient automobiles that incidentally slow the pace of global warming. By bringing about technological change, these taxes also incidentally have helped make it easier for all countries--even those without high gasoline taxes or companies that produce fuel-efficient automobiles--to respond to the challenge of global warming with improved energy efficiency .

Changes in society that incidentally affect human responses to global change are important both directly and because they could become tomorrow's deliberate responses. For example, gasoline taxes, which were not initiated with the global environment as a consideration, could be increased to cut CO2 emissions. Studies of the incidental effects of such actions might inform decision makers about what could happen without deliberate intervention and about which present policies might make societies more robust in the face of global change. Both kinds of knowledge are essential for informed policy debates.

Coordinated Versus Uncoordinated Responses

Response to global change may be coordinated, as through the policies of governments or trade associations aimed at eliciting the same action from many actors, or uncoordinated, as with independent actions of households or small firms. Both types of response can be either anticipatory or post facto; both can affect global change either deliberately or incidentally. Moreover, coordinated and uncoordinated responses can be connected to each other, in that coordinated actions by governments and industries can create new options for uncoordinated actors, prohibit responses, or raise or lower their costs.

Interventions at Different Points in the Process

Figure 4-1 elaborates on Figure 2-2 to show how human action can intervene at any point in the cycle of interaction between human and environmental systems to protect against threats to what humans value. We offer the following rough distinctions among types of interventions. (2)

The term mitigation is generally used to describe interventions on the human causes side of the diagram. Mitigation includes all actions that prevent, limit, delay, or slow the rate of undesired impacts by acting directly or indirectly on environmental systems. Mitigation can operate at various points in the causal cycle. It may involve direct interventions in the environment (type E in the figure) to counteract the effects of other human actions, direct interventions in the proximate human causes ( type P), and interventions in the human systems ( type H) that drive global change, intended to have an indirect or downstream effect on the proximate causes.

For example, global warming is the direct result of a change in the earth's radiative balance; humans can mitigate global warming by any actions that slow the rate of change or limit the ultimate amount of change in the radiative balance. (3) They can intervene in the environment ( type E), for example by directly blocking incident solar radiation with orbiting particles or enhancing the ocean sink for carbon dioxide by adding nutrients. They can intervene in the proximate causes ( type P), by regulating automobile use or engine design to cut carbon dioxide emissions or limiting the use of certain nitrogen fertilizers to reduce nitrous oxide emissions. They can intervene in human systems ( type H) and indirectly control the proximate causes, by investing in research on renewable energy technologies to replace fossil fuel or providing tax incentives for more compact settlements to lower demand for transportation.

Mitigation of ozone depletion might, in principle, involve release of substances that interact chemically with CFCs, producing compounds with benign effects on the stratospheric ozone layer ( type E), limiting emissions of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other gases that deplete ozone ( type P), or developing alternative methods of cooling buildings that do not rely on CFCs ( type H). Mitigation of threats to biological diversity might include, at least in principle, engineering new varieties, species, or even ecosystems to save diversity, if not individuals ( type E); limiting widespread destruction of tropical forests, estuaries, and other major ecosystems ( type P); or promoting systems of land tenure and agricultural production that decrease the pressure for extensive development of tropical forests ( type H).

Humans can intervene in several ways on the response side of the cycle. Such actions are sometimes generically called adaptation, but there are important distinctions among them. One type of response, which can be called blocking, prevents undesired proximate effects of environmental systems on what humans value. It can be described by example. If global climate change produces sufficient warming and drying (drought) on a regional scale, it may threaten the region's crops; development and adoption of drought-resistant crops or crop strains can break the connection between environmental change (drought) and famine by preventing crop failure. Similarly, loss of stratospheric ozone threatens light-skinned humans with skin cancer, through exposure to ultraviolet radiation; avoidance of extreme exposure to sun and application of sunscreens help prevent cancer, although they do not mitigate the destruction of the ozone layer. Tropical deforestation threatens species with extinction by eliminating their habitats; creation of forest preserves would provide many species sufficient habitat to survive, while doing little to slow net deforestation.

Another type of adaptive response is to prevent or compensate for losses of welfare that would otherwise result from global change. Such actions can be called adjustments. (4) They neither mitigate environmental change nor keep it from affecting what people value, but rather intervene when a loss of welfare is imminent or after it has begun to be manifest. Examples include evacuation from areas stricken with flood or drought, food shipments or financial assistance to those remaining in such areas, and development of synthetic substitutes for products previously obtained from extinct species. (5)

Yet another type of response, sometimes called anticipatory adaptation, aims to improve the robustness of social systems, so that an unchecked environmental change would produce less reduction of values than would otherwise be the case. (6) This type of intervention does not alter the rate of environmental change, but it lowers the cost of any adjustments that might become necessary. It can be distinguished, at least in theory, from type H mitigation in that it does not necessarily alter the driving forces of global change. An example is diversification in agricultural systems. Farmers, regions, and countries that rely on a range of crops with different requirements for growth may or may not produce less greenhouse or ozone-depleting gases than monoculturists. But polycultures are more robust in the face of drought, acid deposition, and ozone depletion. There may be crop failure, but only in some crops. Similarly, families and communities that have both agricultural and nonagricultural income are harmed less by the same threats than purely agricultural groups. They have other sources of income and can purchase crops from elsewhere. (7)

All social systems are vulnerable to environmental change, and modern industrial societies have different vulnerabilities from earlier social forms. Modern societies have built intricate and highly integrated support systems that produce unprecedented material benefits by relying critically on highly specialized outputs of technology, such as petrochemical fertilizers and biocides; hybrid seeds; drugs and vaccines; and the transmission of electricity, oil, and natural gas from distant sources. Although these complex sociotechnical systems contain great flexibility through the operation of global markets, they may have vulnerabilities that reveal themselves in the face of the changes that these systems have helped create. For instance, modern societies have become highly dependent on fossil fuels and vulnerable to a serious disruption of supply or distribution systems. They also support much larger and denser populations than ever before; such populations may be vulnerable to ecological changes affecting the viability of their food supplies.

Evidence from studies of disasters suggests that the poor, who lack diversified sources of income, political influence, and access to centralized relief efforts, tend to be worst off (Erikson, 1978; Kroll-Smith et al., 1991; Mileti and Nigg, 1991). However, studies to assess the vulnerabilities of larger human systems, such as national or world food or energy systems, are rarely done (e.g., Rabb, 1983). The far side of vulnerability is also little studied: When a system fails to resist environmental pressure, under what conditions does it return to its previous state? If it undergoes permanent change, what determines the nature of the new state?

The Pivotal Role of Conflict

An important consequence of global environmental change is conflict, because global change affects what humans value, and different people value different things. When U.S. energy use threatens the global climate or land clearing in Brazil threatens the extinction of large numbers of species, people around the world are understandably concerned. They may express a desire--or even claim a right--to influence the choices of people or governments continents away. And the people or countries subjected to those claims may resist, especially when they feel that changing their behavior will mean suffering. The further global change proceeds, the more likely it seems that it will be a source of conflict, including international conflict, over who has a right to influence the activities implicated as causes, who will pay the costs of responding, and how disputes will be settled.

A Current Controversy: To Mitigate or Not to Mitigate?

One of the most heated policy debates about responses to a global change is between advocates of immediate efforts to mitigate global warming and those who would postpone such action. This debate arose within the committee, even though we were not charged with recommending strategies for response to global change. We offer the following brief, sharply stated version of the debate to highlight some important characteristics of controversies about global change: that they are partly, but not entirely, fact-based; that they are likely to persist even in the face of greatly increased knowledge about the causes of global change; and that they are pervasive, even in discussions restricted to research priorities .

In one view, the wise course of action on global warming is to conduct research on the phenomenon but not to take action to slow or mitigate it until the phenomenon is better understood. Proponents of this view make the following arguments:

1. Uncertainty of global change. The nature and extent of global warming in the future is highly uncertain because of incomplete knowledge of the relevant properties of the atmosphere, oceans, biosphere, and other relevant systems. It is wasteful for society to expend resources to prevent changes that will not occur anyway. Moreover, the mitigation efforts may themselves set in motion undesired changes.

2. Adjustment will make mitigation unnecessary. Human systems can adjust to global climate changes much faster than they are likely to occur. The projected doubling of atmospheric carbon dioxide levels will take place about 80 years from now. By contrast, financial markets adjust in minutes, administered-market prices in weeks, labor markets in years, and the economic long run is usually reckoned at no more than two decades. The implication for action is that what individuals and organizations do on their own in anticipating climate change may be sufficiently successful that organized, governmental responses will be superfluous. The impact of climate change will reach people through slow price increases for the factors of production; in reasonably well-functioning markets, economic actors adapt readily to such changes. They invent industrial processes that economize on scarce inputs, find substitutes, purchase energy-efficient equipment when energy prices are rising, and so forth. In the past, such adjustments have contributed to human progress, and there is every reason to expect that pattern to continue.

3. Don't fight the wrong war. It makes no sense to act like the generals who built the Maginot Line for the wrong war or to construct dikes for cities whose populations will have moved or dams to water crops that will be grown elsewhere. Technological and social changes often eliminate problems without any specific mitigation efforts by changing the offending technology or making it obsolete. For example, boilers no longer explode on trains because they no longer use steam engines; horses are no longer the main polluters of urban streets. Concern about the greenhouse effects of fossil fuel burning will prove premature if development of fusion or solar energy technology can replace most fossil fuel use over the next 50 years.

4. Better policy options may lie on the horizon. Further research may identify more effective and less costly interventions than those now available. For example, it has recently been suggested that adding iron to the oceans to fertilize phytoplankton that would absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere may be a way to address the greenhouse effect (Martin et al., 1990). That proposal, whatever its ultimate feasibility or desirability (Lloyd, 1991), demonstrates that improved understanding of biogeochemical systems might generate promising new proposals for mitigating global change. Improved understanding of social systems has reasonable potential to discover other classes of effective response.

5. It may be more costly to act now. Actions that can be postponed will be less burdensome because of continuing economic progress. If people living in the 1890s had invested in preventing today's environmental problems, their expense on our behalf would probably have been made on the wrong problems, and it would have been an inequitable transfer of resources from a poorer generation to a richer one. It probably makes no more sense for the current generation to sacrifice to benefit a future, even wealthier generation. This is the argument for a positive social discount rate. It assumes that expenditures made now could otherwise be invested at compound interest in improvements in human well-being. If the growth rate for such investment exceeds the average rate at which environmental problems develop, people will be better off in the future if they do not spend on mitigation now.

Proponents of immediate mitigative action make the following arguments:

1. Action now is more feasible and effective than action later. It is in the nature of exponential growth processes that the earlier the growth rate decreases, the greater the final effect. Bringing down the birth rate in India to two children per couple in 1995 rather than in 2005 can make a difference of 300 million people by the time the Indian population stabilizes (Meadows, 19851. To achieve the same effect by starting later would impose greater restrictions on the people living at that time. It is therefore easier to mitigate the effects of exponential growth the sooner the effort is made.

2. It is easier to adjust to slower change. Mitigation is prudent because of the long time lags in the global environmental system. By the time it becomes clear that a response is needed, it may be too late to prevent catastrophe if the change is proceeding rapidly. Even if catastrophe is unlikely, mitigation that slows the rate of change makes it more likely that adjustments can be made in time. This is clearly the case for nonhuman organisms, such as tree species that can adjust to climatic change by migrating, as seedlings move to more favorable locations. Such species have a maximum rate of migration, so can adjust to climatic change below that rate. (8) The same principle probably also applies to human adjustments to major environmental change.

3. It is wise to insure against disaster. Mitigation in the face of possibly catastrophic outcomes is like taking out insurance against flood and fire. The insurance expenses are bearable, but the expenses of catastrophe may not be.

4. Avoid irretrievable error. It is wise to mitigate against potentially irretrievable losses. The clearest example is species extinction. If species are valued for themselves, their loss is irretrievable; even if they are valued only for what benefits they may have for humanity, species loss may be irretrievable. Other environmental values, such as loss of the life-supporting capacity of wetlands or large bodies of water, may also be irretrievable; often we do not know until the values are lost.

5. Avoid high-risk environmental experiments. Humans are now conducting large-scale uncontrolled experiments on the global environment by changing the face of the earth and the flows of critical materials at unprecedented rates. It is prudent to limit the pace and extent of such experiments because of the likelihood of unanticipated consequences. Like natural mutations, most of these experiments are probably destined to fail, and there is only one global environment to experiment on. As the extent of human intervention in the global environment continues to increase, so does the strength of this argument. The argument supports mitigation efforts that slow ongoing human interventions in the environment, but generally not those that would stop greenhouse warming by new interventions in the global environment.

6. Economic arguments do not encompass some environmental goods. The discount-rate argument is specious in the general case because the costs and benefits of postponing action are not always commensurable. Some important and meaningful tradeoffs can be made on economic grounds, for instance, between investing in renewable energy development and in directly limiting the burning of fossil fuels. But sometimes the economic logic makes no sense. If current economic activity destroys the life-support systems on which human life depends, what investment at compound interest could ever recoup this cost? Economic arguments also cannot deal with some things--including the balance of nature--on which people place intrinsic or spiritual value. To the extent people want to preserve such values, mitigation is the only acceptable approach. Moreover, economic accountings systematically undervalue things--such as genetic resources--for which there are few property rights or for which economic value is only potential.

7. Some mitigative action is fully justified on other grounds. A good example is investments in energy efficiency that provide an excellent return on investment even with narrow economic calculations. Such actions can achieve the benefits of mitigation at no extra cost, while providing other benefits.

Implications of Conflict About Human Response

Many controversies are beginning to develop out of concerns with global change. One pits Third World countries against the developed countries that are now becoming concerned with limiting use of fossil fuels and restricting the felling of tropical forests. The Third World position, of course, is that other countries used fossil fuels and undeveloped frontiers for their economic development, and fairness dictates that the poorer nations now have their turn. Many analysts believe that if large-scale climate change results from human activities, the poorer countries are likely to suffer most because they lack resources they could use to adapt. Such an outcome would produce yet other conflicts.

The controversies about global change are only partly fact-based. True, some of the disagreements might fade with better knowledge about the global environment and the likely effects of different feasible responses. As it became clear that expected global warming over the next 50 years could not cause the breakup of the West Antarctic icecap, the flood-prevention rationale for slowing greenhouse gas emissions became considerably weaker. A response such as dike building seems much more appropriate when the sea threatens only a few areas. And if it became clear what each policy option--at the local, national, and international levels--would accomplish if enacted, some of them could easily be rejected.

But knowledge often fails to resolve controversy. It frequently raises new disputes or calls old beliefs into question. And even when new knowledge reduces uncertainty, controversies persist because not only facts, but also important interests and values, are at stake. Informed people disagree because the remaining uncertainty leaves room for judgment, because they may assume different scenarios about the future of society, and because an outcome that harms what one person values may enhance what another values. Those impressed with the potential benefits of economic growth tend to line up against those who fear of the potential costs; those with a strong faith in the ability of human ingenuity to solve life's problems line up against those awed by what is at stake; those who stand to benefit from an outcome line up against those who stand to lose. When faced with choices, some prefer international solutions to global problems, others see national action as more feasible; some favor market adaptations, others, community-based action outside the market and the state; some are attracted to large-scale technological solutions, others see them as cures that may be worse than the disease. In short, the debates are not only about the workings of human and environmental systems, but also about political and economic interests, conflicting values and faiths, differing assumptions about the future, and different judgments about resiliency in the face of the unexpected.

Research on Conflict Studies of environmental and technological conflict are a significant part of social research on conflict (e.g., Nelkin, 1979; Mazur, 1981; Freudenburg and Rosa, 1984; Jasper, 1988; Clarke, 1989). Issues of global environmental change have all the features characteristic of the most difficult technological controversies: awareness of human influence on the hazards, serious worst-case possibilities, the possibility of widespread and unintended side effects, delayed effects not easily attributable to specific causes, and lack of individual control over exposure National Research Council, 1989b:57-62).

Social science can help illuminate the nature of environmental controversies and evaluate ways of managing them. Social scientists interested in environmental policy have studied the conditions shaping and favoring the resolution of environmental controversies and the role of scientific, governmental,- and mass media communication in the decision process (e.g., Dietz and Rycroft, 1987; Gould et al., 1988; Jasanoff, 1990; Nelkin, 1979, 1988; National Research Council, 1989b). Some have begun to consider the various ways environmental change might lead to conflicts with the potential for violence (e.g., Homer-Dixon, 1990).

Social scientists specializing in conflict have developed generalizations that might be more thoroughly applied to environmental conflict. For example, conflicts may be based mainly on ideology, interest, or understanding (Aubert, 1963; Glenn et al., 1970; Rapoport, 1960, 1964; Hammond, 1965; von Winterfeldt and Edwards, 1984; Syme and Eaton, 1989), and different types of conflict tend to yield to different tactics of resolution (e.g., Druckman and Zechmeister, 1973; Druckman et al., 1977). Defining an environmental conflict as either one of understanding or one of interests and values affects which groups and arguments are considered legitimate in policy debates (Dietz et al., 1989). The nature of the relationship between the parties to a conflict can determine whether the conflict focuses on ideological positions (e.g., Campbell, 1976; Zartman and Berman, 1982), differences in understanding (e.g., Axline, 1978), or differences in interests (e.g., Strauss, 1978). And the behavior of the parties to a conflict depends on the pattern and relative strength of incentives to compete and to cooperate (e.g., Pruitt and Kimmel, 1977), the probability of continued interaction in the future (e.g., Axelrod, 1984), and on whether two or more parties are involved (Groennings et al., 1970; Hopmann, 1978; Putnam, 1988).

More research seems warranted to use existing knowledge about conflict to illuminate the ways social conflict may result from global environmental change. This research would investigate the ways environmental changes may affect organized social groups and their resource bases and would hypothesize links between those effects and conflict. A first step is to construct an analytical framework for identifying the possible routes from particular environmental changes to particular types of conflict. The framework of Homer-Dixon (1990) provides a start, for causes of violent conflict. Case analyses of past social conflicts can be used to assess hypotheses drawn from such analytic frameworks.

Research on Conflict Resolution and Management Social scientists have also identified a number of approaches for resolving or managing policy disputes, some of which are beginning to be studied in the context of environmental conflicts. These include mediation techniques intended to address the value dimension of environmental conflict (e.g., Ozawa and Susskind, 1985); facilitation procedures that emphasize problem-solving discussions and have proved useful as a prelude to negotiation (Burton, 1986; Druckman et al., 1988); techniques of separating values from interests to makes conflicts appear smaller and easier to solve (Fisher, 1964; but see Druckman, 1990); efforts to focus on shared principles for decisions (Zartman and Berman, 1982) or to discuss values as ranked priorities rather than ideological differences (Seligman, 1989); policy exercises that emphasize creative use of scientific knowledge to solve environmental problems (Brewer, 1986; Toth, 1988a, b); and computer software for dealing with the cognitive and political aspects of both conflicts over the interpretation of data for environmental management (Hammond et al., 1975; Holling, 1978).

The nature of technological conflicts suggests, however, that over the long term, management is a more realistic goal than stable resolution. Recent work on risk communication is potentially relevant to social responses to global change because global change problems, like those to which that literature refers, are characterized by high levels of scientific uncertainty and great potential for conflict about social choices (Covello et al., 1987; Davies et al., 1987; Fischhoff, 1989; National Research Council, 1989b; Stern, 1991). This work suggests that institutions responsible for decisions about global change will also have to manage conflict. These institutions will need to provide accurate information, but should not expect information to resolve conflict. The institutions will need to make a place for the stakeholders to be represented from the earliest stages of the decision process, ensure openness in processes of policy decision, include mechanisms for the main actors to have access to relevant information from sources they trust, and use the conflicting perspectives and interpretations of current knowledge and uncertainty to inform the ongoing debate (National Research Council, 1989b; Stern, 1991).

Research Needs. Relatively little is known about the structure of particular conflicts about global change at the local, national, and international levels or about which means will be most effective in dealing with them. Therefore, we recommend increased empirical research, including both field studies and laboratory-simulation studies, to clarify the sources and structures of particular environmental conflicts and to test the efficacy of alternative techniques for their resolution and institutions for their management.

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Reproduced, with permission, from: Stern, P. C., O. R. Young, and D. Druckman. 1992.Global environmental change: Understanding the human dimensions. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press.Human Consequences and Responses Since before recorded history, environmental changes have affected things people value.

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Albert Bandura (1925 - Present)

Key Concepts

People learn through observing others' behavior, attitudes, and outcomes of those behaviors[1]. "Most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling: from observing others, one forms an idea of how new behaviors are performed, and on later occasions this coded information serves as a guide for action." (Bandura). Social learning theory explains human behavior in terms of continuous reciprocal interaction between cognitive, behavioral, and environmental influences.

Necessary conditions for effective modeling

Attention - various factors increase or decrease the amount of attention paid. Includes distinctiveness, affective valence, prevalence, complexity, functional value. One's characteristics (e.g. sensory capacities, arousal level, perceptual set, past reinforcement) affect attention.

Retention - remembering what you paid attention to. Includes symbolic coding, mental images, cognitive organization, symbolic rehearsal, motor rehearsal

Reproduction - reproducing the image. Including physical capabilities, and self-observation of reproduction.

Motivation - having a good reason to imitate. Includes motives such as past (i.e. traditional behaviorism), promised (imagined incentives) and vicarious (seeing and recalling the reinforced model)

Reciprocal Determinism

Bandura believed in "reciprocal determinism", that is, the world and a person's behavior cause each other, while behaviorism essentially states that one's environment causes one's behavior[2], Bandura, who was studying adolescent aggression, found this too simplistic, and so in addition he suggested that behavior causes environment as well[3]. Later, Bandura soon considered personality as an interaction between three components: the environment, behavior, and one's psychological processes (one's ability to entertain images in minds and language).

Social learning theory has sometimes been called a bridge between behaviorist and cognitive learning theories because it encompasses attention, memory, and motivation. The theory is related to Vygotsky's Social Development Theory and Lave's Situated Learning, which also emphasize the importance of social learning.

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Additional Resources and References

Resources

References

1. Bandura, A. (1977). Social Learning Theory. New York: General Learning Press.

2. Bandura, A. (1986). Social Foundations of Thought and Action. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

3. Bandura, A. (1973). Aggression: A Social Learning Analysis. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

4. Bandura, A. (1997). Self-efficacy: The exercise of control. New York: W.H. Freeman.

5. Bandura, A. (1969). Principles of Behavior Modification. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

6. Bandura, A. & Walters, R. (1963). Social Learning and Personality Development. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

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Albert Bandura (1925 - Present) People learn through observing others' behavior, attitudes, and outcomes of those behaviors[1]. "Most human behavior is learned observationally through modeling: from observing others, one forms an idea of how new behaviors are performed, and on later occasions this coded information serves as a guide for action."

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Invader Zim is making his return, so we're revisiting the original cartoon. What were your favorite moments from the show? Let us know in the comments below.
Invader Zim is back! This early-'00s Nickelodeon classic is back thanks to the new Netflix original film Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus. While this particular animated series may not have been as scary as some of the most horrifying kids shows of the '90s, it did introduce many children to the disgusting, scary, fascinating concept of the human body.

A bit of an outlier when it came to Nickelodeon cartoons at the time, Invader Zim followed a villain--an alien tasked with conquering Earth, even if he's not very good at it. Zim decides to hide amongst humans by posing as an elementary-school student by simply wearing a wig and contact lenses, not even hiding his green skin. Most episodes had a bleak or even outright depressing message about how much the world sucks, and there is nothing you can do about it. And this was all aided by the series' signature filthy aesthetic that brought out the rot and decay in our society. More than that, though, the show often revolved around grotesque stories involving bodies, introducing many kids to the body horror sub-genre.

Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus serves as both an ending to the series, bringing Zim and his human archenemy and classmate Dib's conflict to an intergalactic stage with world-ending stakes, while also opening the door to more stories. Now that the Zim has returned, what better time to revisit the grossest and most disturbing moments in the franchise?

10. Zim's relatable fight against lice

Season 1, Episode 17: Lice
One of the best things about Invader Zim was how relatable it was. By taking something as common as lice and fully leaning into how truly gross the whole concept is, Zim manages to make us scared and disgusted by our world and bodies. When a kid enters the classroom with lice, it spreads and infests the entire school, which is then quarantined.

The disturbing moment comes when the wave of the lice infection spreads throughout the school and every child is desperately scratching their heads while dozens of white dots jump around above them. As if that wasn't enough, the episode ends with the school delouser using a device that liquifies Zim's skin, as it is the only thing that kills lice for good.

9. Cop gets his brain swapped with a squid's brain

Season 1, Episode 19: Gir Goes Crazy and Stuff
During the episode "Gir Goes Crazy and Stuff" Zim changes his robot servant Gir's programming to make him tougher. Gir ends up attacking a cop car and throwing the car through Zim's house, causing the cop to see Zim's alien form. In order to make him forget what he saw, Zim grabs a squid, and shoves it inside the police officer's head. We don't see the medical procedure, but we do see the officer becoming "Squidman", asking for his tentacles and acting frustrated for not being able to shoot ink. The poor guy can't even walk properly anymore, and the episode ends with him at the beach, "returning home" to the sea as Gir remarks that the guy is getting eaten by a shark.

8. Zim gouges a kid's eye out

Season 1, Episode 3: Bestest Friend
Many of the episodes follow Zim doing crazy things to avoid being outed as an alien. After overhearing a classmate say his lack of friends makes him "inhuman," Zim sets out to find a best friend. He finally finds one in his classmate Keef, a loner kid who quickly becomes obsessed with the alien. Once Zim decides he's over the idea of friends and dumps Keef, he starts stalking Zim.

Zim eventually hears of a surprise party Keef is planning for him and decides to finally get rid of the kid. He gives Keef a gift box, and a pair or robotic arms come out of it and literally gouge Keef's eyes out and replace them with robotic eyes that make him believe a squirrel is his new best friend. This being a cartoon for children, we only see the shadow of the arms ripping the eyes off Keef, but the implication is enough to scar the show's audience for life.

7. Nick's Happiness probe

Season 2, Episode 2: Zim Eats Waffles
Sweet, innocent Nick. The character that was intended to be a humorous wink at Nickelodeon Studios ended up being pure, concentrated nightmare fuel in the form of a smiling child. He first appeared in "Gir Goes Crazy and Stuff" as a kid inside a tube with various cables and wires inserted in his neck and head, which Zim says are meant to monitor the "happiness centers" on Nick's brain.

Next time we see him is for a brief moment in "Zim Eats Waffles". Zim ask Gir to bring him a test subject, and the little robot complies and drags Nick, who is strapped to a gurney and suddenly has a huge screw-shaped probe coming out of his skull. The probe is meant to force Nick's brain to feel nothing but happiness all the time, and he is fully aware of it. Through Nick's perpetual and big smile, we see the eyes of a scared kid under constant pain and torture.

6. Zim's Akira moment

Season 1, Episode 6: Career Day
As most Invader Zim episodes, this one starts with a simple premise--it's career day at school and Zim gets labeled a fast food restaurant worker on his career aptitude. Early in the episode, Zim begins to show a rash in his neck that is due to something called the Galactic Equinox. It basically means all of the planets are aligning, causing aliens that are off of their homeworlds to enter Invader Zim's revolting version of molting.

While at work at MacMeaties, Zim's rash starts increasing in size until his entire face is covered in green, leaking lumps. Once the planets align during the Equinox, Zim's body literally bursts outward like a giant gelatinous mass that covers the entire restaurant like Tetsuo in Akira. His molting body even pulsates as it grows out of proportion. It only lasts for a few seconds, but it is enough to turn your off fast food restaurants better than any documentary could.

5. Dib and Zim fuse with bologna

Season 1, Episode 12: Bolognius Maximus
Invader Zim became such a cult hit because it could not only do gross, but it could fully commit to being totally silly. Take for example this episode which begins with Dib throwing a slice of bologna at Zim that burns his skin, making Dib laugh.

Zim then decides to prank Dib by fusing his DNA with bologna. Naturally, because this show is ridiculous, Dib manages to do the same to Zim. Though not as disgusting as other episodes, the sight of Zim and Dib becoming round, giant bologna sausages, running around wobbly while hungry dogs chase them down the streets is as disturbing as it is hilarious.

4. Cronenberg babies

Season 1, Episode 10: Plague of Babies
Another episode with a simple premise that quickly escalates into the gross and the bizarre. Zim accidentally brings the wrath of an alien species that look identical to human babies upon him. After Zim escapes from the alien babies' torture, the armada of babies decide to form what they call "Giganto Baby". Suddenly a massive pile of alien babies merges together in the closest the show has ever come to a Cronenberg movie, as their tiny little bodies form a single, gigantic humanoid mass with baby heads and limbs popping out.

3. Dibs get turned inside out

Season 1, Episode 10: Bloaty's Pizza Hog
Though this may be the most upsetting and disturbing moment on the list, it doesn't get the number 1 spot because it is sadly only an imaginary sequence that lasts for less than 10 seconds.

Dib's father is a renowned scientist who simply doesn't have time for his family on a regular basis, so they have an annual family dinner night. This year it'ss finally time for Dib's sister, Gaz, to pick the restaurant, but as Gaz looks forward to eating pizza, Dib sneaks away to Zim's ship and disappears. Gaz easily walks right into Zim's base and finds Zim about to perform some hideous experiments on Dib. She decides to let him carry on.

Zim then literally turns Dib's body inside out. The next thing we see is Gaz returning home, ready to go eat pizza dragging Dib's sack of organs behind her. It is not until her dad declares family dinner night cancelled due to Dib's current state that she screams in terror and it is revealed that she imagined the whole thing. It's a very short scene, but the sight of Gib's pile of organs, with his intestines leaking fluid, is enough to warrant a place on this list.

2. Psychic pimple

Season 1, Episode 7: Rise of the Zitboy
Pimples are as natural as they are gross. So, of course, when Zim gets a pimple it is ten times grosser, but also kind of hilarious. After trying to put some Acne Blast on the pimple, it makes the disgusting, green, pus-filled water balloon of a pimple comically oversized. Given that Gir is a "genius", he decides to draw a face on the zit, which somehow makes it develop hypnotic abilities.

This is one of the grossest episodes not only in the show, but on children's TV in general. Once Zim figures out he can use the powers of the zit to brainwash his classmates, he gives the zit a little costume and calls it Pustulio. The most disturbing moment in an already gross and disturbing episode comes when Pustulio grows too big and eventually exploding in a massive wave of pus that floods the entire school. It is absolutely disgusting, funny, and it will get stuck in your head forever.

1. Zim consuming organs

Season 1, Episode 4: Dark Harvest
There is no way this list could not end without mentioning the episode "Dark Harvest." Not only is it the best episode of the show, but it's also the most disturbing. As usual, it begins with Dib making fun of Zim for not being human--in this case for his lack or organs--and Zim going the extra mile to hide his true identity.

There are so many disturbing moments in this episode alone it is hard to pinpoint the best one. We start with a shot of the camera going inside a kid's bellybutton to find that his liver has been replaced with an ankle monitor. As soon as Dib figures out that Zim is harvesting the organs of children to appear more human, he goes to the cafeteria and scans them, only to find organs replaced left and right with common items like an alarm clock, a milk carton, and even a cat. Again, as thought-provokingly gross as it is funny. This is an episode that referencesAlien and Halloween. There's even a nod to A Nightmare on Elm Street with a boiler room scene. You know, children's favorites movies!

The moment that takes the cake happens when Dib finally catches up to Zim, now looking like "a hideous blob of stolen organs". Having stuffed his grotesque body with as many organs as possible, he has so many organs (including 6 different hearts and spleens of 3 colors) that he belches up an intestine and then slurps it up like spaghetti.

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Invader Zim: 10 Gruesome Body Horror Scenes In The Classic Nickelodeon Series

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Invader Zim is making his return, so we're revisiting the original cartoon. What were your favorite moments from the show? Let us know in the comments below. Invader Zim is back! This early-'00s Nickelodeon classic is back thanks to the new Netflix original film Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus.

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Learning theory tells us how we take in and process information and knowledge. A person's environment influences his learning. In the case of Pavlov's dog, for example, the physiologist Ivan Pavlov found that the sound of a metronome produced saliva in a dog's mouth. The dog was conditioned to hear the sound and associate that sound with food, hence the salivation. This is called classical conditioning.

In operant conditioning, coined by B.F. Skinner, we learn through reinforcement or punishment. We avoid touching a pot of boiling water, for example, because we will burn our fingertips. Skinner developed the operant conditioning chamber, later known as the Skinner Box, to study animal behavior. The chamber or box has a key or bar that can be pressed so that the animal obtains a reward like food or water. Manipulating the key meant food, that is the premise of reinforcement in learning.

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The basis of social learning theory is simple: People learn by watching other people. We can learn from anyone-teachers, parents, siblings, peers, co-workers, YouTube influencers, athletes, and even celebrities. We observe their behavior and we mimic that behavior. In short, we do what they do. This theory is also known as social cognitive theory.

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Invader Zim, the Nickelodeon animated series about a kid alien set on total human annihilation by Jhonen Vasquez, began airing all the way back in 2001. Chances are, if you watched it as it first aired, you were young! At the very least you were 18 years younger than you are now. Have you watched it recently? It's absolutely going to mess you up more today than it did back then if you do.

Personal experience: I was 21 when Invader Zim debuted, which means I wasn't a kid, but I was still built like a tank. I had a lot of get up and go. I was still in college and I still got away with smoking cigarettes at diners at 3 in the god damn morning.

At the time, watching Invader Zim was a delight because I could focus on how it didn't shy away from how morally bankrupt society is. Schools are like prisons. Advertisements manipulate children into buying things they don't really want or need. Children, in general, are awful. The world is random. Everything is bad. Laugh at it! It's a very emo approach to the show, but one I think was pretty common at the time.

But, also personal experience: I am 39 now, and rewatching Invader Zim is infinitely more disturbing for me today. I'm middle-aged, my lungs are wrecked so cigarettes are right out and if I ate chicken fingers in the late night/early morning hours I'm pretty sure my Crohn's disease would guarantee a severe gastrointestinal punishment. I'm worn, I'm weak, and I've seen the infrastructure of my community atrophy in ways I couldn't have fathomed in my twenties.

Sure, all the yucks about how crappy childhood and the media geared towards that phase of life are still readily apparent, but you wanna know what really stands out for me watching Invader Zim now? The body horror. Good GOD, the body horror.

The stuff that stands out in Invader Zim now, for the middle-aged set, is how it's constantly talking about the constant state of disintegration the meat sacks our consciousnesses call home are. There's an episode called "Bolognius Maximus" where Zim slowly turns his nemesis, Dib, into bologna. Sentient bologna. It sounds funny, but the fact is that, in a way, we're all slowly turning into bologna. Or, put more literally, the meat that we are made of is all in a constant state of becoming less cohesive and more.. stinky. It's a story about mortality and the limitations of the human body over time. Spoiler alert: that episode doesn't end happily!

Invader Zim is rife with stories like that. There's episodes about objects and places of safety suddenly turning against you, episodes about how you can't trust your own eyes or instincts, episodes about severe allergic reactions, and ones that are just about your organs. So many organs.

On this episode of Every Day Animation, creator of the Nyx Nightmares YouTube Channel, May Leitz, joins the podcast to talk about the wondrous fever dream that is Invader Zim. We talk about how being trans and active medical transition can impact the perception of ones own consciousness inside a body both for good and for ill. I also literally had a fever while we recorded this episode! It definitely comes across! Enjoy!

On the next (and penultimate) episode of Every Day Animation, we're taking it down about 60 notches where writer Paste Movies writer, Kyle Turner, will be joining the program to talk about Fantasia and Fantasia 2000. We're talking about music and its impact on animation! Nice and peaceful. No body horror, hooray! We'll see you there.
Click here for the podcast's RSS feed. Click here to subscribe on iTunes. Click here to subscribe on Google Play.

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Invader Zim, the Nickelodeon animated series about a kid alien set on total human annihilation by Jhonen Vasquez, began airing all the way back in 2001. Chances are, if you watched it as it first aired, you were young! At the very least you were 18 years younger than you are now.

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Your access to the NCBI website at www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov has been temporarily blocked due to a possible misuse/abuse situation involving your site. This is not an indication of a security issue such as a virus or attack.

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A social behavior theory which proposes that new behaviors can be acquired by observing and imitating others. Albert Bandura is known for studying this theory. It states that learning is a cognitive process that takes place in a social context and can occur purely through observation or direct instruction, even in the absence of motor reproduction or direct reinforcement. In addition to the observation of behavior, learning also occurs through the observation of rewards and punishments, a process known as vicarious reinforcement. When a particular behavior is rewarded regularly, it will most likely persist; conversely, if a particular behavior is constantly punished, it will most likely desist. The theory expands on traditional behavioral theories, in which behavior is governed solely by reinforcements, by placing emphasis on the important roles of various internal processes in the learning individual.

In the 1940s, B. F. Skinner delivered a series of lectures on verbal behavior, putting forth a more empirical approach to the subject than existed in psychology at the time. In them, he proposed the use of stimulus-response theories to describe language use and development, and that all verbal behavior was underpinned by operant conditioning. He did however mention that some forms of speech derived from words and sounds that had previously been heard (echoic response), and that reinforcement from parents allowed these 'echoic responses' to be pared down to that of understandable speech. While he denied that there was any "instinct or faculty of imitation", Skinner's behaviorist theories formed a basis for redevelopment into Social Learning Theory.[citation needed ]

At around the same time, Clark Leonard Hull, an American psychologist, was a strong proponent of behaviorist stimulus-response theories, and headed a group at Yale University's Institute of Human Relations. Under him, Neal Miller and John Dollard aimed to come up with a reinterpretation of psychoanalytic theory in terms of stimulus-response. This led to their book, Social Learning and Imitation, published in 1941, which posited that personality consisted of learned habits. They used Hull's drive theory, where a drive is a need that stimulates a behavioral response, crucially conceiving a drive for imitation, which was positively reinforced by social interaction and widespread as a result. This was the first use of the term 'social learning', but Miller and Dollard did not consider their ideas to be separate from Hullian learning theory, only a possible refinement. Nor did they follow up on their original ideas with a sustained research program.

Julian B. Rotter, a professor at Ohio State University, published his book, Social Learning and Clinical Psychology in 1954. This was the first extended statement of a comprehensive social learning theory. Rotter moved away from the strictly behaviorist learning of the past, and considered instead the holistic interaction between the individual and the environment. Essentially he was attempting an integration of behaviorism (which generated precise predictions but was limited in its ability to explain complex human interactions) and gestalt psychology (which did a better job of capturing complexity but was much less powerful at predicting actual behavioral choices). In his theory, the social environment and individual personality created probabilities of behavior, and the reinforcement of these behaviors led to learning. He emphasized the subjective nature of the responses and effectiveness of reinforcement types. While his theory used vocabulary common to that of behaviorism, the focus on internal functioning and traits differentiated his theories, and can be seen as a precursor to more cognitive approaches to learning.

Rotter's theory is also known as expectancy-value theory due to its central explanatory constructs. Expectancy is defined as the individual's subjectively held probability that a given action will lead to a given outcome. It can range from zero to one, with one representing 100% confidence in the outcome. For example, a person may entertain a given level of belief that they can make a foul shot in basketball or that an additional hour of study will improve their grade on an examination. Reinforcement value is defined as the individual's subjective preference for a given outcome, assuming that all possible outcomes were equally available. In other words, the two variables are independent of each other. These two variables interact to generate behavior potential, or the likelihood that a given action will be performed. The nature of the interaction is not specified, though Rotter suggests that it is likely to be multiplicative. The basic predictive equation is:

Where:

BP = Behavior Potential

E = Expectancy

RV = Reinforcement Value

Although the equation is essentially conceptual, it is possible to enter numerical values if one is conducting an experiment. Rotter's 1954 book contains the results of many such experiments demonstrating this and other principles.

Importantly, both expectancies and reinforcement values generalize. After many experiences ('learning trials', in behaviorist language) a person will develop a generalized expectancy for success in a domain. For example, a person who has played several sports develops a generalized expectancy concerning how they will do in an athletic setting. This is also termed freedom of movement. Generalized expectancies become increasingly stable as we accumulate experience, eventually taking on a trait-like consistency. Similarly, we generalize across related reinforcers, developing what Rotter termed need values. These needs (which resemble those described by Henry Murray) are another major determinant of behavior. Generalized expectancies and needs are the major personality variables in Rotter's theory. The influence of a generalized expectancy will be greatest when encountering novel, unfamiliar situations. As experience is gained, specific expectancies are developed regarding that situation. For example, a person's generalized expectancy for success in sports will have less influence on their actions in a sport with which they have long experience.

Another conceptual equation in Rotter's theory proposes that the value of a given reinforcer is a function of the expectancy that it will lead to another reinforcing outcome and the value set upon that outcome. This is important because many social reinforcers are what behaviorists term secondary reinforcers - they have no intrinsic value, but have become linked with other, primary, reinforcers. For example, the value set on obtaining a high grade on an examination is dependent on how strongly that grade is linked (in the subjective belief system of the student) with other outcomes - which might include parental praise, graduation with honors, offers of more prestigious jobs upon graduation, etc. - and the extent to which those other outcomes are themselves valued.

Rotter's social learning theory also generated many suggestions for clinical practice. Psychotherapy was largely conceptualized as expectancy modification and, to some extent, as values modification. This may be seen as an early form of cognitive-behavioral therapy.

In 1959, Noam Chomsky published his criticism of Skinner's book Verbal Behavior, an extension of Skinner's initial lectures. In his review, Chomsky stated that pure stimulus-response theories of behavior could not account for the process of language acquisition, an argument that contributed significantly to psychology's cognitive revolution. He theorized that "human beings are somehow specially designed to" understand and acquire language, ascribing a definite but unknown cognitive mechanism to it.

Within this context, Albert Bandura studied learning processes that occurred in interpersonal contexts and were not, in his view, adequately explained either by theories of operant conditioning or by existing models of social learning. Bandura began to conduct studies of the rapid acquisition of novel behaviors via social observation, the most famous of which were the Bobo doll experiments (1961-63).

In their 1963 book Social Learning and Personality Development, Bandura and Richard Walters argued that "the weaknesses of learning approaches that discount the influence of social variables are nowhere more clearly revealed than in their treatment of the acquisition of novel responses." Skinner's explanation of the acquisition of new responses relied on the process of successive approximation, which required multiple trials, reinforcement for components of behavior, and gradual change. Rotter's theory proposed that the likelihood of a behavior occurring was a function of the subjective expectancy and value of the reinforcement. According to Bandura, this model did not account for a response that had not yet been learned - though this contention does not address the likelihood that generalization from related situations would produce behaviors in new ones.

Bandura went on to write the book Social Learning Theory in 1977.

Bandura's Social Learning Theory (1977)

Social Learning Theory integrated behavioral and cognitive theories of learning in order to provide a comprehensive model that could account for the wide range of learning experiences that occur in the real world. As initially outlined by Bandura and Walters in 1963, the theory was entirely behavioral in nature; the crucial element that made it innovative and increasingly influential was its emphasis upon the role of imitation. Over the years, however, Bandura shifted to a more cognitive perspective, and this led to a major revision of the theory in 1977. At this time, the key tenets of Social Learning Theory were stated as follows:

1. Learning is not purely behavioral; rather, it is a cognitive process that takes place in a social context.

2. Learning can occur by observing a behavior and by observing the consequences of the behavior (vicarious reinforcement).

3. Learning involves observation, extraction of information from those observations, and making decisions about the performance of the behavior (observational learning or modeling). Thus, learning can occur without an observable change in behavior.

4. Reinforcement plays a role in learning but is not entirely responsible for learning.

5. The learner is not a passive recipient of information. Cognition, environment, and behavior all mutually influence each other (reciprocal determinism).

Typical stimulus-response theories rely entirely upon direct experience (of the stimulus) to inform behavior. Bandura opens up the scope of learning mechanisms by introducing observation as a possibility. He adds to this the ability of modeling - a means by which humans "represent actual outcomes symbolically". These models, cognitively mediated, allow future consequences to have as much of an impact as actual consequences would in a typical S-R theory. An important factor in Social Learning Theory is the concept of reciprocal determinism. This notion states that just as an individual's behavior is influenced by the environment, the environment is also influenced by the individual's behavior. In other words, a person's behavior, environment, and personal qualities all reciprocally influence each other. For example, a child who plays violent video games will likely influence their peers to play as well, which then encourages the child to play more often.[citation needed ]

Social Learning Theory draws heavily on the concept of modeling as described above. Bandura outlined three types of modeling stimuli:

1. Live models, where a person is demonstrating the desired behavior

2. Verbal instruction, in which an individual describes the desired behavior in detail and instructs the participant in how to engage in the behavior

3. Symbolic, in which modeling occurs by means of the media, including movies, television, Internet, literature, and radio. Stimuli can be either real or fictional characters.

Exactly what information is gleaned from observation is influenced by the type of model, as well as a series of cognitive and behavioral processes, including:

Attention - in order to learn, observers must attend to the modeled behavior. Experimental studies have found that awareness of what is being learned and the mechanisms of reinforcement greatly boosts learning outcomes. Attention is impacted by characteristics of the observer (e.g., perceptual abilities, cognitive abilities, arousal, past performance) and characteristics of the behavior or event (e.g., relevance, novelty, affective valence, and functional value). In this way, social factors contribute to attention - the prestige of different models affects the relevance and functional value of observation and therefore modulates attention.

Retention - In order to reproduce an observed behavior, observers must be able to remember features of the behavior. Again, this process is influenced by observer characteristics (cognitive capabilities, cognitive rehearsal) and event characteristics (complexity). The cognitive processes underlying retention are described by Bandura as visual and verbal, where verbal descriptions of models are used in more complex scenarios.

Reproduction - By reproduction, Bandura refers not to the propagation of the model but the implementation of it. This requires a degree of cognitive skill, and may in some cases require sensorimotor capabilities. Reproduction can be difficult because in the case of behaviors that are reinforced through self-observation (he cites improvement in sports), it can be difficult to observe behavior well. This can require the input of others to provide self-correcting feedback. Newer studies on feedback support this idea by suggesting effective feedback, which would help with observation and correction improves the performance on participants on tasks.

Motivation - The decision to reproduce (or refrain from reproducing) an observed behavior is dependent on the motivations and expectations of the observer, including anticipated consequences and internal standards. Bandura's description of motivation is also fundamentally based on environmental and thus social factors, since motivational factors are driven by the functional value of different behaviors in a given environment.

Social Learning Theory has more recently applied alongside and been used to justify the theory of cultural intelligence. The cultural intelligence hypothesis argues that humans possess a set of specific behaviors and skills that allow them to exchange information culturally. This hinges on a model of human learning where social learning is key, and that humans have selected for traits that maximize opportunities for social learning. The theory builds on extant social theory by suggesting that social learning abilities, like Bandura's cognitive processes required for modeling, correlate with other forms of intelligence and learning. Experimental evidence has shown that humans overimitate behavior compared to chimpanzees, lending credence to the idea that we have selected for methods of social learning. Some academics have suggested that our ability to learn socially and culturally have led to our success as a species.

Recent research in neuroscience has implicated mirror neurons as a neurophysiology basis for social learning, observational learning, motor cognition and social cognition. Mirror neurons have been heavily linked to social learning in humans. Mirror neurons were first discovered in primates in studies which involved teaching the monkey motor activity tasks. One such study focused on teaching primates to crack nuts with a hammer. When the primate witnessed another individual cracking nuts with a hammer, the mirror neuron systems became activated as the primate learned to use the hammer to crack nuts. However, when the primate was not presented with a social learning opportunity, the mirror neuron systems did not activate and learning did not occur. Similar studies with humans also show similar evidence to the human mirror neuron system activating when observing another person perform a physical task. The activation of the mirror neuron system is thought to be critical for the understanding of goal directed behaviors and understanding their intention. Although still controversial, this provides a direct neurological link to understanding social cognition.

Social learning theory has been explained and shown in many different examples. Depression in social learning can be discussed in a variety of ways. For example, a person with depression may withdraw from social situations and avoid interacting with others. They may feel like they don't have anything to contribute to conversations or others won't understand them. Depression can make it difficult for people to find the motivation to engage in social activities. They may also feel like it takes too much energy to interact with others, and they would rather stay home alone. Social learning theory provides a framework for understanding the role of social factors in depression and for developing interventions that promote positive behaviors and attitudes.

Addiction is related to the social learning theory as it emphasizes the role of social influences and reinforces the development and maintenance of addictive behaviors. The social learning theory suggests that people learn and adopt behaviors through observation, experience, and reinforcement from social interactions with others. In the case of addiction, individuals may learn and adopt substance use behaviors from peers, family members, or media exposure, and through positive reinforcement such as pleasure or relief from stress. Additionally, the social learning theory highlights the importance of social context in reinforcing addictive behaviors, as social situations and norms may influence the decision to engage in substance use. The social learning theory proposes that addiction is a learned behavior influenced by environmental and social factors.

One modern-day example of the social learning theory in action is the phenomenon of "viral challenges" on social media. These challenges involve individuals performing a specific action or task, usually for the purpose of entertainment, and then sharing the video with their online community. According to Bandura's social learning theory, people learn new behaviors by observing and imitating the actions of others. In the case of viral challenges, individuals watch others perform a specific task and then "imitate" the behavior by completing the challenge themselves.

For example, the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, which went viral in the summer of 2014, involved people dumping a bucket of ice water over their heads to raise awareness for ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) and then challenging others to do the same. The challenge quickly spread across social media platforms, with celebrities and politicians also participating, and raised over $115 million for the ALS Association.

Another example is the "In My Feelings" challenge, which took place on social media in the summer of 2018. The challenge involved people dancing to Drake's song "In My Feelings" alongside a moving car and sharing the video online. The challenge was initially started by Instagram user @theshiggyshow and quickly gained popularity across social media platforms.

These examples demonstrate how the social learning theory can be applied to real-world phenomena, with individuals learning and imitating new behaviors through the observation of others on social media platforms.

Social learning theory has been used to explain the emergence and maintenance of deviant behavior, especially aggression. Criminologists Ronald Akers and Robert Burgess integrated the principles of social learning theory and operant conditioning with Edwin Sutherland's differential association theory to create a comprehensive theory of criminal behavior. Burgess and Akers emphasized that criminal behavior is learned in both social and nonsocial situations through combinations of direct reinforcement, vicarious reinforcement, explicit instruction, and observation. Both the probability of being exposed to certain behaviors and the nature of the reinforcement are dependent on group norms.

In her book Theories of Developmental Psychology, Patricia H. Miller lists both moral development and gender-role development as important areas of research within social learning theory. Social learning theorists emphasize observable behavior regarding the acquisition of these two skills. For gender-role development, the same-sex parent provides only one of many models from which the individual learns gender-roles. Social learning theory also emphasizes the variable nature of moral development due to the changing social circumstances of each decision: "The particular factors the child thinks are important vary from situation to situation, depending on variables such as which situational factors are operating, which causes are most salient, and what the child processes cognitively. Moral judgments involve a complex process of considering and weighing various criteria in a given social situation."

For social learning theory, gender development has to do with the interactions of numerous social factors, involving all the interactions the individual encounters. For social learning theory, biological factors are important but take a back seat to the importance of learned, observable behavior. Because of the highly gendered society in which an individual might develop, individuals begin to distinguish people by gender even as infants. Bandura's account of gender allows for more than cognitive factors in predicting gendered behavior: for Bandura, motivational factors and a broad network of social influences determine if, when, and where gender knowledge is expressed.

Social learning theory proposes that rewards are not the sole force behind creating motivation. Thoughts, beliefs, morals, and feedback all help to motivate us. Three other ways in which we learn are vicarious experience, verbal persuasion, and physiological states. Modeling, or the scenario in which we see someone's behaviors and adopt them as our own, aide the learning process as well as mental states and the cognitive process.

Principles of social learning theory have been applied extensively to the study of media violence. Akers and Burgess hypothesized that observed or experienced positive rewards and lack of punishment for aggressive behaviors reinforces aggression. Many research studies and meta-analyses have discovered significant correlations between viewing violent television and aggression later in life and many have not, as well as playing violent video games and aggressive behaviors. The role of observational learning has also been cited as an important factor in the rise of rating systems for TV, movies, and video games.[citation needed ]

Entertainment-education in the form of a telenovela or soap opera can help viewers learn socially desired behaviors in a positive way from models portrayed in these programs. The telenovela format allows the creators to incorporate elements that can bring a desired response. These elements may include music, actors, melodrama, props or costumes. Entertainment education is symbolic modeling and has a formula with three sets of characters with the cultural value that is to be examined is determined ahead of time:

1. Characters that support a value (positive role models)

2. Characters who reject the value (negative role models)

3. Characters who have doubts about the value (undecided)

Within this formula there are at least three doubters that represent the demographic group within the target population. One of these doubters will accept the value less than halfway through, the second will accept the value two-thirds of the way through and the third doubter does not accept the value and is seriously punished. This doubter is usually killed. Positive social behaviors are reinforced with rewards and negative social behaviors are reinforced with punishment. At the end of the episode a short epilogue done by a recognizable figure summarizes the educational content and within the program viewers are given resources in their community.

Through observational learning a model can bring forth new ways of thinking and behaving. With a modeled emotional experience, the observer shows an affinity toward people, places and objects. They dislike what the models do not like and like what the models care about. Television helps contribute to how viewers see their social reality. "Media representations gain influence because people's social constructions of reality depend heavily on what they see, hear and read rather than what they experience directly". Any effort to change beliefs must be directed toward the sociocultural norms and practices at the social system level. Before a drama is developed, extensive research is done through focus groups that represent the different sectors within a culture. Participants are asked what problems in society concern them most and what obstacles they face, giving creators of the drama culturally relevant information to incorporate into the show.

The pioneer of entertainment-education is Miguel Sabido a creative writer/producer/director in the 1970s at the Mexican national television system, Televisa. Sabido spent eight years working on a method that would create social change and is known as the Sabido Method. He credits Albert Bandura's social learning theory, the drama theory of Eric Bentley, Carl Jung's theory of archetypes, MacLean's triune brain theory and Sabido's own soap opera theory for influencing his method. Sabido's method has been used worldwide to address social issues such as national literacy, population growth and health concerns such as HIV.

Social learning theory enriches psychotherapy by providing a holistic perspective that encompasses historical context, cultural considerations, family dynamics and interpersonal relationships, and intergenerational patterns. These allow therapists to have a more complex, nuanced understanding of the development and maintenance of presenting problems.

Another example is the social cognitive optimization, which is a population-based metaheuristic optimization algorithm. This algorithm is based on the social cognitive theory, simulating the process of individual learning of a set of agents with their own memory and their social learning with the knowledge in the social sharing library. It has been used for solving continuous optimization, integer programming, and combinatorial optimization problems.

There also several mathematical models of social learning which try to model this phenomenon using probabilistic tools.

1. ^ Bandura, Albert (1971). "Social Learning Theory" (PDF). General Learning Corporation. Archived from the original (PDF) on 24 October 2013.

2. ^ Bandura, Albert (1963). Social learning and personality development. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston.

3. ^ Postman, Leo; Sassenrath, Julius (1961-07-01). "The Automatic Action of Verbal Rewards and Punishments". The Journal of General Psychology. 65 (1): 109-136. doi:10.1080/00221309.1961.9920464. ISSN 0022-1309. PMID 13737423.

4. ^ Herrmann, Esther; Call, Josep; Hernàndez-Lloreda, María Victoria; Hare, Brian; Tomasello, Michael (2007-09-07). "Humans Have Evolved Specialized Skills of Social Cognition: The Cultural Intelligence Hypothesis". Science. 317 (5843): 1360-1366. Bibcode:2007Sci...317.1360H. doi:10.1126/science.1146282. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 17823346. S2CID 686663.

5. ^ Gallois, Sandrine; Heras, María; Sella, Carlo; Satorras, Mar; Ribera-Fumaz, Ramon; Ruiz-Mallén, Isabel (2024-04-23). "Learning to collaborate within transdisciplinarity: internal barriers and strengths of an art-science encounter". Sustainability Science. doi:10.1007/s11625-024-01495-5. ISSN 1862-4057.

6. ^ Schudel, M (September 1, 2014). "ALS Ice Bucket Challenge leads to $115 million in donations". Thewashingtonpost.

7. ^ Daly, J (July 11, 2018). "Drake's 'In My Feelings' challenge leads to Philadelphia police warning". NBCNews.

8. ^ Qiqi Jiang; Chuan-Hoo Tan; Choon Ling Sia; Kwok-Kee Wei / Followership in an Open-source Software Project and Its Significance in Code Reuse In: MIS Quarterly, Vol. 43, No. 4

9. ^ Anderson, C.A.; Bushman, B.J. (2001). "Effects of violent video games on aggressive behavior, aggressive cognition, aggressive affect, physiological arousal, and pro-social behavior: A meta-analytic review of the scientific literature". Psychological Science. 12 (5): 353-359. doi:10.1111/1467-9280.00366. PMID 11554666. S2CID 14987425.

10. ^ Okoye, Chukwuemeka; Obi-Nwosu, Harry (2020). "OBSERVATIONAL LEARNING AND NATIONAL VALUE: THESIS OF BIG BROTHER NAIJA TV SHOW". British International Journal of Education and Social Sciences. 7 (2) - via Research Gate.

11. ^ Kumpulainen, K., Wray, D. (2002). Classroom Interaction and Social Learning: From Theory to Practice. New York, NY: RoutledgeFalmer.

12. There are some limitations to the Social Learning Theory that make it more complicated than it is made out to be. Some of the limitations are that a changes in the environment does not automatically mean that a person changes too. The theory also seems to ignore biological and hormonal dispositions of people. You can read more about this by clicking on this link. ^ "The Social Cognitive Theory". Archived from the original on 2014-03-21.

13. Gong, Yue-Jiao (2014-10-11). "From the Social Learning Theory to a social learning algorithm for global optimization" (PDF). Systems, Man and Cybernetics (SMC).

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A social behavior theory which proposes that new behaviors can be acquired by observing and imitating others. Albert Bandura is known for studying this theory. It states that learning is a cognitive process that takes place in a social context and can occur purely through observation or direct instruction, even in the absence of motor reproduction or direct reinforcement.

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Invader Zim: Enter the Florpus has arrived on Netflix! The movie follows Zim, who suddenly reappears to begin Phase 2 of his evil alien plan to conquer Earth. His longtime nemesis Dib sets out to unmask him once and for all!

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Invader Zim exemplifies social learning by leading by example on what not to do.