Anti-Social Experiments

For my breaching social norm experiment I was determined to do something I would never do even if it was a dare, especially since my ability to interact with strangers is not the best. So, I decided to make people feel uncomfortable by holding their hand. What I would do is walk up to the person from behind and slowly make my way to their hand to make them feel even more uncomfortable. People normally hold hands with their significant other, or with someone they know like a friend or family member, so to be holding hands with a stranger is out of the ordinary and awkward.

The Bobo Doll Experiment was a study on aggression conducted by Albert Bandura at Stanford University in 1961 because there was a lot of debate about whether a child’s social development was due to genetics, environment factors, or social learning from others around them. The purpose of the study was to give credit to Bandura’s claim that children behavior can be acquired by observation and imitation of a trusted adult role model. The experiment was performed by a team of researchers who physically and verbally mistreated a 3- and 5-foot painted cartoon clown doll, that is designed to sit back upright when knocked down, in front of preschool-age children, which led the children to later copy the behavior of the adults by attacking the doll in the same fashion.

Every day, there are scientist/ researchers conducting experiments, or studies, in order to try and prove facts about everyday life. In conducting these experiments, there are the normal, ethical experiments that have continuously gone to prove many different facts that most of us might have not even noticed about ourselves or one another, and then there are the few experiments that are deemed to be unethical and, although still have shown and proved to us different facts about ourselves, really can not be replicated once again because of the amount of controversy caused by them. The experiments and studies such as the Stanley Milgram Obedience experiment, the Stanford Prison and Guards experiment, the Bystander Effect, the David Reimer

In this experiment, infants observed the “Protagonist” as a plush animal hand puppet that was struggling to open the lid of a clear plastic box that contained a brightly coloured rattle. The Protagonist received help in opening the box from the “Opener”, represented by a prosocial puppet, and was interchangeably prevented from opening the box by the “Closer”, represented by an antisocial puppet that slammed the box lid closed. After this, infants were presented with the Opener and Closer characters and supported in reaching out for one of them.

showed less aggression to the doll than those who never saw an adult in the playroom

Considering social norms are defined as common expectations that rule people’s behavior, social control is used by people in society to ensure others follow these expectations. As seen in the experiments, my friends’ reactions show me that the social norm of eye contact is significant because they tried to socially control my behavior to make me look them in the eyes. These forms of informal punishment include, my friend in the first experiment who moved in closer, my friend in the second experiment who moved his head around, and my roommate in the third experiment who asked me how I was doing; all in an effort to get my attention through eye contact. Additionally, while I was breaking the social norm, I felt uncomfortable since it was difficult for me to not make eye contact with them, even when they attempted to socially control me.

Harlow’s experiment with baby monkey’s demonstrated how important a mothers affection is during early childhood development. Harlow conducted an experiment with baby rhesus monkeys that had just been born. The experiment was trying to see whether the monkey was attached to its mother for necessities such as food, water, etc or for a mothers love. The newly born monkey was placed with two different “mothers” one mother was made of terry cloth and the other was made of wire. The mother that was made of wire could feed the monkey while the other mother made from terry cloth could not. The experiment showed that the monkey showed more attention to the mother made of terry cloth than the mother made of wire. Harlow also done an experiment

Until the end of World War II, researchers established their own ethical standards and safeguards for human participants in their research. However, not all researchers were committed to the ethical treatment of human participants. The major impetus for a shift from individualized ethical guidelines was the uncovering of the brutal experiments performed on prisoners in Nazi concentration camps. A variety of sadistic “medical experiments” were conducted on unwilling participants. Some examples include breaking and re-breaking of bones (to see how many times they could be broken before healing failed to occur) and exposure to extremes of high altitude and freezing water (to see how long a person could survive). As a results of these atrocities

Although the article proved some of the mains points, it does not back up its point from the evidence shown in the Actual paper “Born to Learn: What Infants Learn from Watching Us “ by Dr. Meltzoff. The whole idea behind this article was to confirm the idea that Babies learn from imitating others, which perhaps to parents is a common sense for the reasons that they spend numerous amount of time with their new born babies and until they are socially independent or fully grown. Anyone who is raising kids or perhaps working with kids acknowledges that kids are going to imitate whatever they are going to see. There are many research papers and experiments that provide the evidence that infants learn from watching us. For example one of the experiment’s by Dr.Meltzoff where A 14-month-old where infants were imitating a novel action of touching a panel with the forehead, and then they often react with a smile. The Article ““For Babies, Copy-Cat Games Provide a Social Compass” provides two other experiments run by Dr. Meltzoff to support the evidence but it fails to explain as how a new born who does not even know how he or she looks like, learns to the trick to know that it’s body have matching moving parts to someone’s

Fundamentally, if one produces a myriad of cortisol when fretting then one is drained of cognitive power and self-discipline, hence, the birth of the self-destructive behaviors. Poverty can stimulate a futility situation that is naught but for one to suffer and worry in the ceaseless game of angst, anguish, and despair similar to an inhumane test experiment.

Another point, perhaps the weakest of the study, is methodological shortcomings. Inflated Bobo doll, is primarily designed to be hit down and bounce back up, so basically its purpose is being hit, therefore when the children hit the doll, it didn’t necessarily mean that they were imitating their role models. This contradictory argument is supported by Kniverton and Stephenson found in 1970. On the other hand, bearing all these limitations in mind, “we can deduce that the role model did indeed have a genuine effect on the child’s observed reaction and imitation because all variables other than the independent variable were well and tightly controlled.” This finding is really useful, not purely because it supports the theory of learning through observation, but mainly it demonstrates usefulness of explaining real world situations, such as the influence of TV and actors on children (this is also applicable to further development of social cognitive theory). Probably the biggest strength of this theory is its high face validity. The idea that children would imitate other’s behaviour is highly probable, because we see it every day. But although there are some really strong supporting arguments, that children actually imitate the behaviour, it

The study was simple; show a baby an example of estimable behavior, and afterwards show the infant an example of iniquitous behavior. Later, let the baby decide what he or she likes. The team from the Cognition Center began with a puppet show. In this show, a cat is shown trying to open a plastic box. The cat tries and tries and tries, but he simply cannot open the lid completely. A bunny wearing a green T-shirt comes skipping along and helps open the box. Next, the scenario is repeated, however, this time around a bunny wearing an orange T-shirt comes stomping along and mashes the box shut before running away. The green bunny is both nice and helpful, and the orange bunny is both mean and unhelpful. A staff member will display both bunnies from the play. The baby's mother, who usually watches the study close by, will close her eyes so she will not influence the baby. “More than 80% of the babies in the study showed their preference for the well-behaved bunny, either by reaching for this bunny or staring at it. And with a 3-month old that number goes higher, to 87%.”(CNN.com). This study shows that babies are born with a moral behavior and, therefore, are born with a spiritual

The child I used for this experiment was my five year old cousin who is a female. I chose her because she was the only child I could think of who was around the most efficient early childhood age to test for her development of Seriation, Conservation, Delaying Gratification, and the double picture duck or bunny. I found the most suitable place to do these experiments at the dining table so that I’d have a nice flat surface to lay out all my testing material. There was only one experiment that required me to leave the room and watch from afar which was the marshmallow test. Yes, you may have guessed it, but I did quite a few tests on her because I was curious to see if she had developed some of these stages already.

In the first few months of life, the sole purpose of any child’s behaviour is to survive. This, more often than not, results in actions that reduce the risk of harm and increase the chances of longevity. Of these behaviours, some argue that the most influential is attachment behaviour. “Attachment behaviour is any form of behaviour that results in a person attaining or maintaining proximity to some other clearly identified individual who is conceived as better able to cope with the world”(Bowlby, 1982). Therefore, children will make an effort to stay close to and under the protection of their primary caregiver. According to Webster, “through interactions with their primary caregiver, the child develops expectations and understandings about the workings of relationships. These mental representations of relationships become internalized to the degree that they influence feelings, thought and behaviour automatically and unconsciously” (1999, p.6). Moreover, the response of the identified individual plays a huge role in the child’s perception of the outside world. If the caregiver responds to the child’s needs in a caring and protective manner, the child will feel safe and comfortable in his or her surroundings. If, on the other hand, the caregiver is often emotionally and/or physically unavailable, the child is likely to

Behaviours are learned, hence behaviours can as well be unlearned and be replaced with new behaviours (Bustamante, Tennant & Ramo, 1996). The natural influence of certain environmental conditions has been shown to result in certain behaviours – sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse (Ormrod, 2006). This also means that behaviours can be unlearned when they become intolerable. According to operant conditioning, one’s behaviour can be altered to be more likely to be repeated or reduced by giving them reinforcement and punishment (AP Psychology, n.d.) as it is believed that the behaviours can be picked up and upheld by consequences (OU, n.d.). By understanding this concept, in fact, operant conditioning principles has been widely used while this implication of control of reinforcement schedules has also been extended into early childhood settings. It is apparent that operant conditioning principles has had a profound influence on developing children’s behaviour; this essay will first discuss about the advantages of involving operant conditioning principles in early childhood setting, followed by an analysis of its disadvantages.