Hi! I have made a mock discussion board for you to reply to. now as a part of this fake discussion board, I need you to reply to a discussion thread with multiple personas that are named "Vincent", "Nathaniel", "Teagan" and "Taylor" your response does not need to be from an empirical basis, you can talk about your opinion. Also, ensure that you are not 
just simply agreeing rather than adding and furthering the discussion


Vincent Choi
30 Sep 16:07
One of the lesser criticised aspects of behaviourism is modelling, it is the tendency of individuals to imitate the behaviours of others. This observation still remains very relevant in understanding how behaviours develop within groups, like herd mentality, this phenomenon demonstrates that complete strangers will replicate behaviours across a large group. Additionally its use in CBT is relatively unchanged, therapists may demonstrate desired behaviours to the client who unprompted will replicate it.
Its enduring popularity as a research focus is owed largely to its cultural and economic impact, advertisement still uses modelling extensively to shape behaviour, the inclusion of young conventional attractive actors to advertise to similar aged groups is extremely common. While also presenting a seductive philosophy to scientist, instead of a complex interplay of mental processors, the simple explanation that seeing the action is enough to cause others to imitate it, speaks to a shared experience, as children and adolescent development it is common to replicate behaviours such as learning to speak from parents, therefore why are adults exempt from a similar pattern?. This obviously ignores the complex emotional and psychology individuals undergo.

Nathaniel Colgan-Zito
30 Sep 18:11

Hi Vincent,
I think the idea of modelling is really interesting, particularly around the concept of “herd mentality” and its role in modern psychology.
Not only does it have a role in CBT like you stated, modelling has its relevance demonstrated within social learning theory, particularly through the bobo doll experiment by Albert Bandura. The experiment showed that children learned behaviours from observing other children, like a “herd mentality”. It’s also important that, while modelling is an important part of behaviourism, our understanding has progressed to recognise that there is a cognitive aspect too, not just observational! This is also demonstrated in the bobo doll experiment; so many other aspects such as attention and retention are involved before we view the final behaviour.
Bobo Doll Experiment: 

Tegan Law-Marks
30 Sep 18:36

Hi Vincent, 
You've made an interesting point. While I think modelling is often associated with social or cognitive psychology due to famous studies like Bandura's social learning theory, it undeniably is rooted in behaviourism in terms of conditioning. It bridges the gap between Behavioural approaches and cognitive approaches, by providing a cognitive link to learning. 
I think there still is, and assume there will continue to be a place for modelling in psychology, because behaviours are constantly modelled both consciously and unconsciously. An issue I think this relates to within a modern day society is the glorification of mental illness, exacerbated by the availability of media/social media.
Emerging research suggests that TikTok contributed to an increase in presentations or reports of psychiatric symptoms that are inconsistent with psychiatric nosology (Haltigan et al., 2023). For example, there has been a noted increase in 'functional tic-like behaviours' around the time of the COVID-19 pandemic (Olvera et al., 2021), that are inconsistent with classic Tourette's syndrome neurotypically and phenotypically. Alarmingly, this trend of presentations coincides with an increase of Tourette's syndrome and tic related content on social media. 
If anyone has a differing opinion on modelling and mental health in the media, I'd love to hear what you think!


Taylor Fox

@Tegan Law-Marks
Hey Tegan, 
I’m really intrigued by the points you've made about social media and its impact of mental illnesses, adding to this, there has been a big increase in over pathologizing basic interacting or everyday thoughts and feelings, which is potentially adding to increase in presentation of symptoms relating to mental illness, similarly, social media has seen a huge shift towards “cancel culture”, this again could be potentially causing fear in people speaking up against this over pathologizing, which in a sense is condition behaviour and encouraging modelling as seen in behaviourism, based in this we are now seeing trends towards research in technology, whether that be AI as mentioned in a different thread or social media.