What the Bobo Doll Experiment Reveals About Kids and Aggression

By Kendra Cherry

In This Article
Background
The Experiment
Impact
Criticism
Does the violence that children observe in television programs, movies, and video games lead
them to behave aggressively? This is a hot question today, but it was also of great interest in the
1960s when a psychologist led an experiment known as the Bobo doll experiment to determine
how kids learn aggression through observation.
Background
Are aggression and violence learned behaviors? In a famous and influential experiment known as
the Bobo doll experiment, Albert Bandura and his colleagues demonstrated one way that children
learn aggression.
According to Bandura's social learning theory, learning occurs through observations and
interactions with other people. Essentially, people learn by watching others and then imitating
these actions.
Aggression lies at the root of many social ills ranging from interpersonal violence to war. It is
little wonder then that the subject is one of the most studied topics within psychology. Social
psychology is the subfield devoted to the study of human interaction and group behavior, and the
scientists working in this field have provided much of the research on human aggression.
The Bobo Doll Experiment
The experiment involved exposing children to two different adult models; an aggressive model
and a non-aggressive one. After witnessing the adult's behavior, the children would then be
placed in a room without the model and were observed to see if they would imitate the behaviors
they had witnessed earlier.
Predictions
Bandura made several key predictions about what would occur during the Bobo doll experiment.
Boys would behave more aggressively than girls.
Children who observed an adult acting aggressively would be likely to act aggressively even
when the adult model was not present.

This study source was downloaded by 100000756164522 from CourseHero.com on 09-27-2022 08:07:23 GMT -05:00

https://www.coursehero.com/file/74910735/Article-on-Bobo-Doll-Experimentdocx/
 Children would be more likely to imitate models of the same-sex rather than models of the
opposite sex.
The children who observed the non-aggressive adult model would be less aggressive than the
children who observed the aggressive model; the non-aggressive exposure group would also be
less aggressive than the control group.
Methodology
The participants for the experiment were 36 boys and 36 girls enrolled at the Stanford University
Nursery School. The children ranged in age between 3 and almost 6 years, and the average
participant age was 4 years 4 months.
There were a total of eight experimental groups. Out of these participants, 24 were assigned to a
control group that would not be exposed to adult models. The rest of the children were then
divided into two groups of 24 participants each. One of the experimental groups would be
exposed to aggressive models, while the other 24 children would be exposed to non-aggressive
models.
These groups were divided again into groups of boys and girls. Each of these subgroups was then
divided so that half of the participants would be exposed to a same-sex adult model and the other
half would be exposed to an opposite-sex adult model.
Before conducting the experiment, Bandura also assessed the children's existing levels of
aggression. Groups were then matched equally so that they had average levels of aggression.
Procedures
Each child was tested individually to ensure that behavior would not be influenced by other
children. The child was first brought into a playroom where there were a number of different
activities to explore.The experimenter then invited an adult model into the playroom and
encouraged the model to sit at a table across the room from the child that had similar activities.
Over a ten minute period, the adult models began to play with sets of tinker toys. In the non-
aggressive condition, the adult model simply played with the toys and ignored the Bobo doll for
the entire period. In the aggressive model condition, however, the adult models would violently
attack the Bobo doll.
"The model laid the Bobo on its side, sat on it, and punched it repeatedly in the nose. The model
then raised the Bobo doll, picked up the mallet, and struck the doll in the head. Following the
mallet aggression, the model tossed the doll up in the air aggressively and kicked it about the
room. This sequence of physically aggressive acts was repeated three times, interspersed with
verbally aggressive responses."
In addition to physical aggression, the adult models also used verbally aggressive phrases such as
"Kick him" and "Pow." The models also added two non-aggressive phrases: "He sure is a tough
fella" and "He keeps coming back for more."

This study source was downloaded by 100000756164522 from CourseHero.com on 09-27-2022 08:07:23 GMT -05:00

https://www.coursehero.com/file/74910735/Article-on-Bobo-Doll-Experimentdocx/
 After the ten-minute exposure to the adult model, each child was then taken to another room that
contained a number of appealing toys including a doll set, fire engine, and toy airplane. The
children were permitted to play for a brief two minutes, then told they were no longer allowed to
play with any of these tempting toys. The purpose of this was to build up frustration levels
among the young participants.
Finally, each child was taken to the last experimental room. This room contained a number of
"aggressive" toys including a mallet, a tether ball with a face painted on it, dart guns, and, of
course, a Bobo doll. The room also included several "non-aggressive" toys including crayons,
paper, dolls, plastic animals, and trucks.
Each child was then allowed to play in this room for a period of 20 minutes. During this time
raters observed the child's behavior from behind a one-way mirror and judged each child's levels
of aggression.

Observational Learning Is Used by Copying Behavior of Others

Results
The results of the experiment supported three of the four original predictions.
Bandura and his colleagues had predicted that children in the non-aggressive group would
behave less aggressively than those in the control group. The results indicated that while children
of both genders in the non-aggressive group did tend to exhibit less aggression than the control
group, boys who had observed an opposite-sex model behave non-aggressively were more likely
than those in the control group to engage in violence.
Children exposed to the violent model tended to imitate the exact behavior they had observed
when the adult was no longer present.
Researchers were correct in their prediction that boys would behave more aggressively than girls.
Boys engaged in more than twice as many acts of physical aggression than the girls.
There were important gender differences when it came to whether a same-sex or opposite-sex
model was observed. Boys who observed adult males behaving violently were more influenced
than those who had observed female models behaving aggressively. Interestingly, the
experimenters found in same-sex aggressive groups, boys were more likely to imitate physical
acts of violence while girls were more likely to imitate verbal aggression.
Impact and Follow-Up
Results of the experiment supported Bandura's social learning theory. Bandura and his colleagues
believed that the experiment demonstrates how specific behaviors can be learned through
observation and imitation. The authors also suggested that "social imitation may hasten or short-
cut the acquisition of new behaviors without the necessity of reinforcing successive
approximations as suggested by Skinner."

This study source was downloaded by 100000756164522 from CourseHero.com on 09-27-2022 08:07:23 GMT -05:00

https://www.coursehero.com/file/74910735/Article-on-Bobo-Doll-Experimentdocx/
 According to Bandura, the violent behavior of the adult models toward the dolls led children to
believe that such actions were acceptable. He also suggested that as a result, children may be
more inclined to respond to frustration with aggression in the future.
In a follow-up study conducted in 1965, Bandura found that while children were more likely to
imitate aggressive behavior if the adult model was rewarded for his or her actions, they were far
less likely to imitate if they saw the adult model being punished or reprimanded for their hostile
behavior.

Criticism
As with any experiment, the Bobo doll study is not without criticisms:

Acting violently toward a doll is a lot different than displaying aggression or violence against
another human being in a real world setting.
Because the experiment took place in a lab setting, some critics suggest that results observed in
this type of location may not be indicative of what takes place in the real world.
It has also been suggested that children were not actually motivated to display aggression when
they hit the Bobo doll; instead, they may have simply been trying to please the adults.
Since data was collected immediately, it is also difficult to know what the long-term impact
might have been.
Some critics argue that the study itself was unethical. By manipulating the children into behaving
aggressively, they argue, the experimenters were essentially teaching the children to be
aggressive.
The study might suffer from selection bias. All participants were drawn from a narrow pool of
students who share the same racial and socioeconomic background. This makes it difficult to
generalize the results to a larger, more diverse population.
Bandura's experiment remains one of the most well-known studies in psychology. Today, social
psychologists continue to study the impact of observed violence on children's behavior. In the
decades since the Bobo doll experiment, there have been hundreds of studies on how observing
violence impacts children's behavior.

Today, researchers continue to ponder the question of whether the violence children witness on
television, in the movies, or through video games translates to aggressive or violent behavior in
the real world.

This study source was downloaded by 100000756164522 from CourseHero.com on 09-27-2022 08:07:23 GMT -05:00

https://www.coursehero.com/file/74910735/Article-on-Bobo-Doll-Experimentdocx/
Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)