Primary and secondary socialization are like the ABCs of how we learn cultural norms. Think of these norms as the rules of a game—just like how you wouldn't dare touch a soccer ball with your hands unless you're the goalkeeper, cultural norms tell us what to do and not do in a society.

Imagine if we never updated these rules though? We'd be playing a very outdated game. That's why these norms can change over time, just like how soccer started to use VAR!

Albert Bandura, the rockstar of social cognitive theory, used to call it social learning theory. He wanted to explain how we learn from observing others—kind of like how we all learned the latest TikTok dance!

Remember learning can be direct (doing something yourself) or indirect (watching someone else do it).

Before Bandura, we had classical and operant conditioning, explaining social learning like dog tricks.

Classical conditioning: Pavlov (not a DJ, but a scientist) noticed his dogs would start drooling when they heard a bell ring because they associated it with food (yum!). This is like how our stomachs growl at the smell of pizza.

Operant conditioning: Skinner (also not a DJ, but another scientist) realized that behaviours can be strengthened or weakened by rewards or punishments. Like how we are more likely to clean our rooms if we know we'll get extra video game time!

The behaviorists focused more on the observable behaviors and their responses to stimuli. They were like chefs focused only on the main dish and ignoring the appetizers and desserts.

But Bandura (2005) thought this was too simple and didn't explain complex social phenomena. For instance, we didn't learn languages by speaking gibberish until something made sense—just imagine the chaos!