Bashing Bobo

Introducing Psychological Research

Bandura, A, Ross, D and Ross, S. A. (1961)

Introduction

This study looks at how aggressive behaviour develops in children. It has

attracted a lot of attention from a number of academic disciplines and is still
quoted in many texts despite its age. There are two social issues that the study
addresses. First, is aggression an innate feature of our behaviour? And to look at
one particular aspect of this issue, can we say that male aggression towards
women is a feature of “natural” male behaviour is it learned? These questions
have a bearing on how we develop social policies to deal with aggressive
behaviour. The second issue, which follows from the first, is if aggression is
learned, then how is it learned?

Bandura’s approach is an extension of behaviourism and basically sees people

as being shaped by their life experiences. It looks at how we are affected by the
rewards and punishments that we experience every day. Bandura is a leading
figure in Social Cognitive Learning Theory, which attempts to extend the
concepts used in operant and classical conditioning to explain complex human
social behaviour. Key concepts in this approach are reinforcement and
imitation.

The study

In this study, Bandura set out to demonstrate that if children are passive
witnesses to an aggressive display by an adult, they will imitate this aggressive
behaviour when given the opportunity. More specifically, the sutdy was guided
by the following predictions:

participants exposed to aggressive models will reproduce aggressive acts

resembling those of the models.

the observation of subdued non-aggressive models will have a generalized

inhibiting effect on the participant’s subsequent behaviour

participants will imitate the behaviour of a same-sex model to a greater degree

than a model of the opposite sex

boys will be more predisposed than girls toward imitating behaviour (p 575)
Thirty-six boys and 36 girls aged betweeen 37 and 69 months were tested. The
mean age was 52 months. They used one male adult and one female adult to act
as role models.

The study had three major conditions: a control group, a group exposed to an
aggressive model and a group exposed to a passive model. The children who
were exposed to the adult models were further sub-divided by their gender, and
by the gender of the model that they were exposed to. In other words, there
were three independent variables. A summary of the groups is shown in the
table below.

Bandura’s eight experiment groups

Control group - 24 participants

Eight experimental groups - each with 6 participants

Aggressive model condition: 24 participants Non-Aggressive model condition:

24 participants
Aggressive model condition
6 boys with same- 6 boys with opposite 6 girls with same 6 girls with opposite
sex model sex model sex model sex model
Non-aggressive model condition
6 boys with same- 6 boys with opposite 6 girls with same 6 girls with opposite
sex model sex model sex model sex model

This is quite a complicated design that appears to cover a lot of different

possibilities. However, the number of children in each group is quite small, and
the results could be distorted if one group contained a few children who are
normally quite aggressive. the researchers tried to reduce this problem by pre-
testing the children and assessing their aggressiveness. They observed the
children in the nursery and judged their aggressive behaviour on 5-point rating
scales. The rating scales assessed the chld’s level of physical aggression, verbal
aggression and aggression towards inanimate objects

A composite score for each child was obtained by adding the results of the
ratings. It was then possible to match the children in each group so that they had
similar levels of aggression in their everyday behaviour. The observers were the
experimenter (female), a nursery school teacher (female) and the model for
male aggression. The study reports that the first two observers were “well
acquainted with the children” (p 576).

A disadvantage of using rating scales in this way is that different observers see
different things when they view the same event. This might mean that the
ratings will vary from one observer to another. To check the inter-rater
reliability of the observations, 51 of the children were rated by two observers
working independently and their ratings were compared. The high correlation
that was achieved (r = 0.89) showed these observations to be highly reliable,
suggeting that the observers were in close agreement about the behaviour of the
children.

Procedure

The children were tested indivdiually. In stage one they were taken to the
experimental room which was set out for play. One corner was arranged as the
child’s play area, where there was a table and chair, potato prints and stickers,
which were all selected as having high interest to these children. The adult
model was escorted to the opposite corner where there was a small table, chair,
blocks, mallet and Bobo (an inflatable doll). The experimenter then left the
room.

In the non-aggressive condition, the model played with the blocks in a quiet
manner, ignoring Bobo. In the aggressive condition the model started to play
with the blocks, but after one minute turned to Bobo and was aggressive to the
doll in a scripted way. The aggression was both physical (for example, “raised
the Bobo doll, picked up the mallet and struck teh doll on the head”) and verbal
(for example, “Pow!” and “Sock him in the nose!”) After 10 minutes the
experimenter returned and took the child to another games room.

In stage two, the child was subjected to “mild aggression arousal.” The child
was taken to a room with attractive toys, but after starting to play with them, the
child was told that these were the experimenter’s very best toys and she had
decided to reserve them for the other children.

Then the child was taken to the next room for stage three of the study. The
experimenter stayed in the room “otherwise a number fo children would either
refuse to remain alone, or would leave before termination of the session.” In this
room there was a variety of toys, both non-aggressive (three bears, crayons, and
so forth) and aggressive toys (for example, a mallet, dart guns and a three-foot
Bobo). The child was kept in this room for 20 minutes and their behaviour was
observed by judges through a one-way mirror. Observations were made at five-
second intervals giving 240 reponse units for each child.

The observers recorded three measures of imitation in which they looked for
responses from the child that were similar to the disply by the adult model:

1. imitative for physical aggression

2. imitative for verbal aggression
 3. imitative non-aggressive verbal responses.

They also looked at two types of behaviour that were incomplete imitations of
the adult model: mallet aggression and siting on Bobo.

In addition, they recorded three types of aggressive behaviour that were not
imitation of the adult model: punching Bobo, non-imitative physical and verbal
aggression and aggressive gun play.

By looking the results we can consider which children imitated the models,
which models they imitated and whether they showed a general increase in
aggresssive behaviour rather than a specific imitation of the adult behaviours.

Results

The results are sumarised in a chart:

Mean aggression scores for experimental and control subjects

Response Aggressive Aggressive Not Non Control Group female

category model male model Aggressive (F) Aggressive (M)

Imitative physical aggression

Mallet aggression

Non-imitative aggression

Girls: 5.5 Boys: 12.4

Girls: 17.2 Boys: 15.5

Girls: 21.3 Boys: 16.2

Girls: 7.2 Boys: 25.8

Girls: 18.7 Boys: 28.8

Girls: 8.4 Boys: 36.7

Girls: 2.5 Boys: 0.2

Girls: 0.5 Boys: 18.7

Girls: 7.2 Boys: 26.1

Girls: 0.0 Boys: 1.5

Girls: 0.5 Boys: 6.7

Girls: 1.4 Boys: 22.3

Girls: 0.7 Boys: 2.0

Girls: 13.1 Boys: 13.5

Girls: 6.1 Boys: 24.6

Imitative verbal Girls: 13.7 Girls: 2.0 Girls: 0.3 Girls: 0.0 Girls: 0.7 Boys:
aggression 4.3 Boys: 12.7 Boys: 1.1 Boys: 0.0 Boys: 1.7
Punches Girls: 6.3 Girls: 16.5 Girls: 5.8 Girls: 4.3 Girls: 11.7 Boys: 18.9
Bobo Boys: 11.9 Boys: 15.6 Boys: 14.8 Boys: 15.7
Aggressive gun Girls: 1.8 Girls: 4.5 Girls: 2.6 Girls: 2.5 Girls: 3.7 Boys: 7.3
play Boys: 15.9 Boys: 8.9 Boys: 16.7 Boys: 14.3

The results above show that:

 the children who saw the aggressive model made more aggressive acts
than the children who saw the non-aggressive model;
 boys made more aggressive acts than girls;
 the boys in the aggressive conditions showed more aggression if the
model wsa

male than if the model was female;

 the girls in the aggressive conditions also showd more physical

aggression if the

model was male but more verbal aggression if the model was female;

• the exception to this general pattern was the observation of how often they
punched Bobo, and in this case the effects of gender were reversed.

Discussion

One of the issues commented on by Bandura, Ross and Ross is the effect that
the gender of the model had on the children. They noted that the aggression of
the female model had a confusing effect on them. For example, one of the
children said, “Who is that lady? That’s not the way for a lady to behave. Ladies
are supposed to act like ladies..” (p 581), and another child said, “You should
have seen what that girl did in there. She was acting like a man. I never saw a
girl act like that before. She was punching and fighting but not swearing” (p
581). On the other hadn, the aggressive behaviour of the male model fitted more
comfortably into a cultural stereotype of appropriate behaviour. For example,
one boy said, “Al’s a good socker; he beat up Bobo. I want to sock like Al!” (p
581), and one of the girls said, “That man is a strong fighter; he punched and
punched and he could hit Bobo right down to the floor and if Bobo got up he
said, “Punch your nose!” He’s a good fighter like Daddy” (p 581).

If we look back at the questions raised in the background section of this

summary, then what can we learn from the study? First, is aggression innate?
Like all examples of the nature-nurture debate, it s very hard to get clear
evidence one way or the other. This study shows that aggressive behaviour can
be learned, bu tit does not offer any evidence on the question of whether some
features of aggression are also innate. On the issue of male violence, it is worth
noting that the children in his study already had an expectation that men will
behave more aggressively than women. This was shown by the children’s
comments.

The second question was how is aggression learned? Bandura believes that we
can learn by being witnesses to the behaviour of others, and his study offers
some support for this idea. If this is so, then it would suggest that the regular
viewing of violent behaviour on television programs would encourage the
learning of violent behaviour in the viewer. A later variation of the experiment
(Bandura, Ross and Ross, 1963) showed the children teh violent behaviour on a
video rather than in real life, and he found that they were still likely to imitate
aggressive behaviour towards the Bobo doll.

There are, howeer, a number of reasons why we should be cautious about

making too many comnections between this study and everyday experience of
children. For example, we have no evidence about any long-term effects of the
study, and also, it is very uncommon for children to be in a situation where they
are alone with strangers. Much of their experience will be with people they
know who will give their opinions on whatever is going on.

Questions
1. How is aggression measured in this study?
2. How else could it be measured?
3. What are the three independent variables?
4. What ethical guidelines does Bandura appear to break?