Aglaia Nikolopoulou: "Imitation" in Great Basil’s speech “Address to young men...” and Bandura’s social cognitive learning theory: a modern dialectic

Nowadays, the imitation behavior plays a major role in everyday situations. Psychologist Albert Bandura studies the effect of imitation in human development. The key-aspect of Bandura’s social cognitive learning theory is model-based learning. Repetition of an act depends on its consequences. According to Bandura, all societies can become pacifist or aggressive. Whether they will become or not, is a result of social conditions that will promote or suppress this tendency. Consequently, Bandura raises the issue of teaching the virtue. Similarly, Basil the Great gives a moral dimension in social learning, in his in his speech, “Address to young men on Greek literature”. He encourages young people to have virtuous models from the Christian Orthodox and the ancient Greek history, as well. Imitation of virtuous models is a Christian’s way to prepare for “the eternal” life. Basil the Great notes that we must put under critical thought the teachings of the ancient Greek poets, prose writers and orators and carefully choose, like the bees, only the useful models for imitation. Therefore, there are appropriate and inappropriate models for imitation. Finally, there is the model that is impossible to be imitated by human: as St. John Climacus points out we can only imitate the spiritual conduct of Jesus Christ “as much as possible by human”. In conclusion, A. Bandura through experiments and St. Basil the Great through examples, both show that virtue can be learned by imitating virtuous models and this could be an important tool for the modern educator.