Those that watched an adult beat the doll were more likely to beat it themselves; the same results were obtained with children who watched the adults play nicely. This study alone shows how strong imitation can be when youths observe adultsor other perceived authority figureseven if the youth is unfamiliar with that person. Lastly, cognitive definitions are attitudes that can be favorable or unfavorable towards a behavior. These definitions can be applied to both deviant and non-deviant behaviors. Similar to differential reinforcement, cognitive definitions are feelings associated with certain behaviors. An individual's brain can be compared to a sponge because everything one interacts with on a daily basis is absorbed to memory; this includes deviant and non-deviant behaviors and positive and negative reinforcements. Through everything that we absorb daily, we are shaped into the people we will be by a young age. This paper supports that social learning theory does have empirical support.
The first article, A longitudinal test of social learning theory: Adolescent smoking, explores how social learning theory applies specifically to adolescent smoking. Smoking is not a criminal act by itself; nonetheless, adolescent smoking is considered a deviant behavior and often associated with drug use and delinquency. For this reason, Ronald L. Akers and Gang Lee argue that Akers and Burgess's social learning theory applies to smoking exactly as it does to any other deviant or delinquent behavior. The hypothesis being tested is that the adolescents who smoke will have a high correlation with the social learning variables that promote smoking and those that don't will have a high correlation with the social learning variables that forbid smoking. Along with Lee, Akers used data from a longitudinal study of 454 secondary school students in Muscatine, Iowa in the form of a self-report survey.