Bandura

Background information
Bandura’s approach was 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's social cognitive learning theory argued that we do not learn only by
receiving awards and punishment - but instead, we can learn through
observation. When we observe others receive a reward, then we may imitate
that behaviour with the goal of getting the same reward. This is known
as vicarious reinforcement.
His study is a classic, although you will see that there are some ethical
concerns with how the study was carried out.
Procedure and results

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 study made the
following predictions:
 children exposed to aggressive models will reproduce aggressive acts

resembling those of the models.
 children will imitate the behaviour of a same-sex model to a greater
degree than a model of the opposite sex
Thirty-six boys and 36 girls aged between 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.
The eight experimental conditions
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 child'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”.
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,
suggesting that the observers were in close agreement about the behaviour of
the children.
The children were tested individually. 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 for the 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 the 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 of 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 response 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 display by the adult model:
1. imitative for physical aggression
2. imitative for verbal aggression
3. imitative non-aggressive verbal responses.
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 at the results we can consider which children imitated the models,
which models they imitated and whether they showed a general increase in
aggressive behaviour rather than a specific imitation of the adult behaviours.
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 was male than if the model was female;
 the girls in the aggressive conditions also showed 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.
Evaluation
The study is an experiment using a matched pairs design. This means that the
researchers controlled for the child's level of aggression in the different
groups.
The sample size was very small. In addition, these were all children of people
working at Stanford university. It is difficult to generalize from such a sample.
The study shows that aggression may be learned, but it does not study
whether aggression is innate. It is not truly a counter-argument to the theory
that aggression has biological origins.
The study is ethically problematic - exposing children to adult violence against
the Bobo. The study is cross-sectional, looking only at aggression exhibited as
a result of seeing the adult hit the Bobo. It did not monitor long-term effects
on the children. It can be argued that the children experienced undue stress
and there was a potential for long-term psychological effects on their
behaviour.
The situation is highly controlled and it is not normal for children to be left
alone with strangers in this way. The study lacks ecological validity.

Bandura

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Bandura

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Bandura

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Background information

Bandura’s approach was an extension of Behaviourism and basically sees

Procedure and results

 children exposed to aggressive models will reproduce aggressive acts

You might also like