Bandura

What was the predominant thought at the time about the effects in children of seeing adult behaviour?

That children would imitate the way they had seen an adult behave but that children needed to see the adult behave this way multiple times before copying it themselves that they'd feel cathartic (feel better after being aggressive).

What was the aim of Bandura's study?

To see whether children would imitate adult behaviour when given the opportunity, even if they saw these behaviours in a different environment and the original 'model' they observed performing the behaviour was no longer present. Specifically it was aggressive behaviour that Bandura was interested in.

What were the four specific hypotheses of Bandura's study?

1) Subjects exposed to aggressive models would reproduce aggressive acts resembling those of their models.

2) Observation of non-aggressive models would have a generalised inhibiting effect on the subjects' subsequent behaviour.

3) Subjects would imitate the behaviour of a same sex model to a greater degree than a model of the other sex.

4) Boys should be more pre-disposed than girls towards imitating aggression.

What was the sample?

• 72 children

• From Stanford University Nursery

• Aged 37-69 months (3-5 years old)

• Mean age 52 months

• Equal gender split

What were the children matched on?

• Physical aggression

• Verbal aggression

• Aggression inhibition

• Aggression towards inanimate objects

How did the researchers know what the children's prior levels of aggression were?

Did a pre-test prior where the children were observed by the researcher and nursery teacher. They'd make judgements in how aggressive they were and the inter-rater reliability was 0.89. Each type of aggression was measured on a 5 point scale for each child so they were each given a score out of 20.

How did the researchers allocate children to the different conditions of the experiment?

• 3 children with the same pre-test score

• 1 of each put in aggressive group, non-aggressive group and control (no model) group

What were the independent variables?

1. Model behaviour

2. Sex of model

3. Sex of child

What were the different model conditions?

1. Aggressive male model

2. Non-aggressive male model

3. Aggressive female model

4. Non-aggressive female model

5. No model (control)

Summarise stage 1 of the procedure for the aggressive model condition (10 mins).

• Each child was taken individually to a room and then taken to a table and given toys to play with including potato printing and stickers.

• An adult then sat at another table which had tinker toys, a bobo doll and a mallet.

• The model okayed with the tinker toys for 1 minute and then turned to the bobo doll and "laid it on its side, sat on it and punched it repeatedly in the nose", "raised it, picked up the mallet and struck the doll on the head", "tossed the doll up in the air aggressively and kicked it about the room.

• This sequence was repeated ~ 3 times with aggressive responses such as "sock him in the nose", "hit him down", "throw him in the air", "kick him", "pow" and two non-aggressive comments "he keeps coming back for more" and "he sure is a tough fella"

Summarise stage 1 of the procedure for the non-aggressive model condition (10 mins).

• Each child was taken individually to a room and then taken to a table and given toys to play with including potato printing and stickers.

• An adult then sat at another table which had tinker toys, a bobo doll and a mallet.

• The model played with the tinker toys and ignored the bobo doll.

Summarise stage 2 (2 mins).

• Children were taken into a smaller room with some attractive toys such as a toy fire engine, jet plane, train, cable car, spinning top and doll set including a pram.

• They were allowed to play with these for 2 minutes before the experimenter said these were their best toys and must be saved for other children but there were toys in the next room they can play with.

Summarise stage 3 (20 mins).

• All 72 children were taken back to the main experiment room and one by one observed by the make model through a one way mirror.

• A record was made every 5 seconds of the behaviour being shown by each child.

• Behaviours recorded were either:

  1) imitative behaviour of physical or verbal aggression

  2) partial imitative behaviour if aggression

  3) novel aggressive behaviour

• In order to provide an estimate of inter-rather reliability half the children also had they behaviour in the third stage scored independently by a second observer. The records were then compared and found to have good inter-rater reliability.

Name two of the mean number of imitative physical aggressive acts for the boys.

1. In the aggressive male model condition it 25.8

2. In the control it was 2.0

1. Name two of the mean umber of imitative verbal aggressive acts for the girls.

1. In the aggressive female model condition it was 13.7

2. In the control it was 0.7

Give some examples of qualitative findings.

• "That ain't no way for a lady to behave"

• "That girl was just acting like a man"

• "He's a good fighter like daddy"

Did the findings of the study support the idea of the predominant thought about the effect of watching aggression at the time?

Yes the children did act aggressively copying the behaviour but they only had to see it once for 10 minutes so they weren't cathartic.

What would Bandura conclude about how children might learn aggressive behaviour?

That children learn aggression through the actions of the models/ people they see around them and how violently they act.

What debates link to this study?

Nature-Nurture

• Nurture as it shows aggression is learned by observing and imitating others- influenced by the environment

Individual-Situational

• Situational since the situation influenced the child’s behaviour suggesting behaviour can change depending on the environment

Evaluate reliability.

Internal

• Standardised procedure- same toys, room layout, time etc.

• Can’t show exact same aggression each time

• Hard to repeat due to breaking ethical guidelines

Inter-rater

• 0.89 score meaning both observers pretty much agreed on what they saw

External

• Quite large sample of 72

• BUT participants split into groups of 3 so low sample

Evaluate validity.

Construct

• Didn’t know the aim so were acting naturally

• BUT we don’t know how parents act at home and the children might’ve gotten tired, therefore grumpy throughout the procedure

Ecological

• Family or others around them might be violent or aggressive that the children could’ve witnessed and imitated + adults do normally demonstrate how to play with toys

• BUT in real life adults don’t attack and play with toys for a period of time and children wouldn’t normally be left alone to see it

Population

• Range of both genders and opportunity sampling means less chance of bias

• BUT only included 3-5 year olds from USA and likely middle class and more educated than other areas of the USA

Evaluate ethnocentrism.

Low

• Social learning theory is deemed universal as everyone learns through observation + imitation of models

High

• All children attending Stanford University Nursery in the USA

Evaluate ethics

Upheld

• Protection from physical harm

Broken

• Informed consent

• Deception

• Protection from mental harm