Aristotle: Friendship and Virtue

 

Friendship is an essential aspect of life which individuals cannot live without. A result is that it is considered to be a feeling that is not only related to virtues, but is a virtue in itself. This is important because it allows individuals to ensure that they achieve a level of prosperity in their societies without any fear of losing what they have acquired. Friendship makes it possible for these individuals to live comfortably because they have friends around them who will ensure that they protect them against any harm. Therefore, friendship ensures that the creation of a society where individuals depend on each other’s good will for their security as well as the advancement and protection of their prosperity. It is a virtue because it helps young people when it comes to preventing them from making mistakes that they might end up regretting. In addition, as individuals become older and have physical limitations, it is friendship which allows them to have the ability to complete tasks that would otherwise have been too heavy for them. A consequence of friendship, therefore, involves the development of a situation where individuals provide each other with support so that they can think and act in concert in order to achieve their mutual goals.

Social Learning Theory

According to the social learning theory, learning is a process that takes place cognitively within a social context. Individuals tend to adopt those behaviors that they observe through social interactions to such an extent that even though they might be through to be disgusting or not of good taste, these individuals end up behaving in a particular way. In this case, learning a behavior can occur through observation and the extraction of information from that observation which is used by the observer to make decisions concerning his future behavior. The result is that a significant number of individuals end up undertaking or participating in behaviors that they would normally not participate in because of the influence of other individuals within their social context. Thus, cognition, environment, and behavior all play a role in determining how an individual is likely to react to stimuli in such a way that promotes the idea that they will be able to fit in with those individuals who are in their social context (Grusec, 1992). Therefore, despite individuals disliking certain behaviors at first, such as smoking cigarettes, they condition themselves to like these behaviors to such an extent that they end up doing them unconsciously. The inability of these individuals to control their behaviors comes about because they learn and develop these attributes without any observable change in their behavior. This is highly significant because it shows that some of the behaviors that are displayed by individuals, such as smoking or drinking coffee are acquired behaviors rather than natural ones.

References

Grusec, J. (1992). Social learning theory and developmental psychology: The legacies of Robert Sears and Albert Bandura. Developmental Psychology, 28(5), 776–786.