Social Learning & the Affective Context Model

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“Thoughts are the shadows of our feelings - always darker, emptier and simpler.”

Nietzsche, The Joyful Science

It was 1961 and in the research department of Stanford university, psychologists looked on as a young boy pounded a large inflatable doll with a hammer. In his defence, he had just observed an adult doing the same thing - what the observers found notable was the similarity between his actions and those of the 'model'.

Bandura's social learning theory proposed something that may seem obvious to us today - that people could learn things simply by watching other people. Whilst this may appear to be common sense now it is worth remembering that the prevailing theory - behaviourism - proposed only two mechanisms of learning: reinforcement (e.g. punishment or reward) and association (as with Pavlov's dog).

For sure, we share learning mechanisms with animals - you need only watch 'Supernanny' to see these principles in action. And chickens have been shown to learn by observation - so this is not a uniquely human trait. What is unusual about humans is the degree to which their learning mechanisms are intertwined with their social mechanisms.

Take mirror neurons for example. Mirror neurons play a fascinating role in our relationships with others- merely observing another person causes our brain to mirror their brain state to some degree: when we watch them raise an arm, part of our brain responds as if we had raised our own arm. When we observe another person in pain, our brains respond as if we, ourselves, were in pain. Our inter-connectivity is 'hard wired'.

But this is really only the tip of the iceberg: our world is experienced in social terms: when we lose status the effect on the brain is similar to actual physical pain. When we feel we have gained status (for example when our post is 'liked' on Facebook) our brain releases the same chemicals as it does when we are hugged.

Our world is social, the things we experience have a social significance interpreted directly by the brain. We go to school to learn about relationships, roles, self and self-defence - via the pretext of formal learning. The dramas play out as we sit through our lessons. We see ourselves first through the eyes of others, building our self-image through their responses to us, though our social reflection.

The events that take place around us - even so minor an event as a move on a chessboard - take on significance in this context. Our massively parallel brain learns to 'see' the world in terms of its affective significances and affordances - what things are threatening, rewarding - bring status and approbation or ignominy and defeat. Without being consciously aware of it, our learning mechanisms build this web of emotional associations around everything we experience, so that our experiences and their affective significance are inextricable.

This 'affective metadata' is how we encode our lives, and how we process our thoughts - only affective associations can allow us to understand 'I wander, lonely as a cloud'. Whilst a deer may instinctively sense a threatening situation, our reactions are vastly more subtle - though the diference is quantitative not qualitative.

What we refer to as 'formal learning' is an effort by the prefrontal cortex (or 'system 2') to exert influence over this learning mechanism. It doesn't work terribly well. Try as I might, I struggle to remember an important phone number. I repeat the number over and over, each time reminding myself how important it is. I would probably do best to imagine myself being torn apart by wild animals if I forget the number. But the brain is not designed to remember such things, and our conscious mind exerts limited influence.

Our uniquely Cartesian error has been to misunderstand ourselves, to attribute to rationality and the computational model of the mind more significance than it warrants. We do not 'store information'. Our decision-making process is rarely deductive. We are creatures that store and compare the subtle webs of association developed by our affective systems. It turns out that thoughts really are the shadows of our feelings – and though it is hard to imagine, it is our feelings not our thoughts that are complex.