The purpose of the present study was to examined the hypothesis that the effects of observational learning of altruistic behavior are related to personal viewpoint, self-efficacy, outcome expectation, and other factors. One hundred and fifty-five fourth-grade school children were assigned randomly to four conditions; distress viewpoint, outcome expectation, altruistic behavior, or non-observational control. After observational learning, the students were immediately administered the generalization test of altruistic behavior, empathy, reward and punishment expectations, and rating tests of self efficacy belief. It was found that; (a) altruistic behavior and outcome expectation conditions had significant learning effects, (b) self-efficacy was able to predict altruistic response in the altruistic behavior viewpoint condition, and (c) from an outcome expectation viewpoint, altruistic behavior toward peers and adults related to punishment expectation, whereas social sharing was related to reward expectation. According to these findings, an observational learning model of altruistic behavior was proposed.
