Albert Bandura's Bobo doll study

Aim

Albert Bandura who believed that we learn by imitating others and that learning takes place in a social context. In the Bobo doll study he aimed to investigate whether children would imitate aggressive behaviour observed in adult role models, supporting social learning theory.

Sample

72 children (36 boys, 36 girls), aged 37-69 months (mean 52 months), from Stanford University Nursery School. Participants were matched through a procedure which pre-rated them for aggressiveness. They were rated on four, five-point rating scales by the experimenter and a nursery school teacher, both of whom were well acquainted with the children.

Phase 1:

taken into a room and sat at a table for ten minutes, the aggressive model began by assembling a tinker toy set but after about a minute turned to a Bobo doll and spent the remainder of the period physically and verbally aggressing it using a standardised procedure

The non-aggressive model assembled the tinker toys in a quiet manner, totally ignoring the Bobo doll.
– The control group did not participate in Phase 1.

Phase 2:

All the children were then taken individually to an another room and subjected to mild aggression. Initially they were allowed to play with some very attractive toys including a fire engine, doll set and spinning top, but after about two minutes the experimenter took the toys away saying they were reserved for other children.

Phase 3:

Children were then taken individually into a third room which contained both aggressive and non-aggressive toys

aggressive toys e.g. 3ft high Bobo doll, a mallet, dart guns and

non-aggressive toys e.g. tea set, cars, dolls

They were observed through a one-way mirror for 20 minutes whilst observers recorded behaviour with inter-scorer reliability of .90 i.e. A very high concordance rate – therefore high reliability.

Results

• Children in the aggressive condition showed significantly more imitation of physical and verbal aggressive behaviour and verbal responses than children in the non-aggressive or control conditions.

• Children in the non-aggressive condition showed very little aggression, although results were not always significantly less than the control group.

• Boys imitated male models more than girls for physical and verbal aggression, non-imitative aggression and gun play.

• Girls imitated female models more than boys for verbal imitative aggression and non-imitative aggression.

• Overall boys produced more imitative physical aggression than girls.

Strengths

• Used a lab experiment so very standardised reducing extraneous variables since all participants went into the same rooms, used the same toys and were in each room for the same amount of time.

• Quantitative data was collected - easy to compare the level of imitated aggression across the conditions i.e. same sex model (control, aggressive, non-aggressive) opposite sex model (control, aggressive, non-aggressive) etc.

• The experiment was set out as a play room, very similar to their own nursery, therefore increased ecological validity.

• From this study there is a great understanding of how easily aggressive behaviours are imitated. This could lead to practical applications such as putting violent TV programmes to later times at night or changing age certificates on certain films etc.

Weakness

• alternative biological explanation for boys being more aggressive - testosterone

• ecological validity - due to the use of a lab experiment the study lacked realism, hitting a Bobo doll is very different from hitting a person and therefore the researchers should be cautious when applying results to real life ALSO playing with a strange adult in an unfamiliar room is not a typical everyday task

• Problems with generalisability – children all from Stanford University nursery, all aged 3-6

Markscheme of content for the experiment

• Children were matched on pre-existing aggression levels and allocated into either the aggressive model condition, the non-aggressive model condition or the control group (no model)

• In the aggressive model condition, the children observed an adult hitting a bobo doll with a hammer and being verbally abusive towards it

• In the non-aggressive model condition, the children observed an adult playing quietly and ignoring the bobo doll

• The children were then placed into a room for 20 minutes which contained various toys including the bobo doll

• Observations of the children’s behaviour were made through a one-way mirror every 5 seconds.