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According to the status envy theory of identification recently proposed by J. W. M. Whiting, where a child competes unsuccessfully with an adult for affection, attention, food, and care, the child will envy the consumer adult and consequently identify with him. Whiting's theory represents an extension of the Freudian defensive identification hypothesis that identificatory behavior is the outcome of rivalrous interaction between the child and the parent who occupies an envied consumer status. In accordance with the social power theory of identification, but contrasting with the status envy hypothesis, one would predict that children will reproduce more of the behavior of the adult who controls positive reinforcers, and that power inversions on the part of the male and female models will produce cross-sex imitation. The secondary reinforcement theory of identification, which has been alluded to in the discussion of social power through attractiveness, has been elaborated in greatest detail by O. H. Mowrer.
Bandura et al. (Sun,) studied this question.