COMMENTARY: "On the Psychosocial Impact and Mechanisms of Spiritual Modeling"

Psychological theories have traditionally emphasized learning from direct experience. If knowledge, values and competencies could be acquired only by trial and error, human development would be greatly retarded, not to mention exceedingly tedious and hazardous. Moreover, limited time, resources, and mobility impose severe limits on places and activities that people can directly explore to gain new social perspectives and styles of thinking and behaving. However, humans have evolved an advanced cognitive capacity for observational learning that enables them to shape and structure their lives through the power of modeling.