Bandura Bobo Experiment

Bandera believed that behavior could be shaped through observing and imitating behavior. He hypothesized that nonaggressive models would have a less violent effect on the kids (vice versa for aggressive models), women models would have a greater effect on the girl kids (same with men and boys), and boys in general would be more violent than girls. In this study, his main goal was to discover whether imitative learning would generalize to settings in which the bobo doll was not present with the child. Bandera used 36 girls and 36 boys (aged 3-6), which he split into three groups, one control group, one group seeing aggressive models, and the final group watching the nonaggressive models.

The room was also equipped with a one-way window so the child could be observed without their acknowledgement. The experiment showed that the consequences in the films that the children observed in the ending, created a different outcome. The children who witnessed the film were the adult was rewarded was most likely to repeat or imitate the aggressive behavior toward the Bobo doll. In the situation of the other children who watched the adult being punished for their aggressive behavior, the children were less likely to recreate the aggressive behavior towards the Bobo doll. After the findings Bandura added to the experiment. The children who watched any of the three films were asked to recreate what the adult did in the film. Each imitation the child recreated correctly, they were rewarded with candy and stickers. Virtually all the children were capable of recreating all actions, aggressive or non-aggressive. The different variations of the films the children watched had no impact on them. In conclusion to Bandura’s experiment, you are capable of imitating any behavior, aggressive or non-aggressive, but you are more likely to imitate if there is expectation of any type of reward.

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.

A man by the name of Albert Bandura came up with an experiment the studies the Social Learning theory; the experiment was called the Bobo Doll Experiment. In the early 1960’s, Albert Bandura conducted this experiment and in this experiment, he had children watch a video of an adult aggressively playing with toys, including a Bobo doll. This adult hit the bobo doll, knocked it down and jumped on the doll screaming “POW!” AND “Kick him!”

The experiment consisted of three individuals. The individuals filled the roles of the authoritative role, the Teacher, and the Learner.

Albert Bandura’s aim for this experiment was to do with how children perceive behaviour and how they may be influenced into recreating it. He wanted to show that when children witness aggressive behaviour, they would then imitate it when given the chance.

According to Bandura, how can modeling be a predisposing risk factor for aggression? Cite examples for the BOBO doll study.

By watching the video about Dr. Bandura’s Bobo doll experiment, it is clear that his hypothesis was that children that sees aggressive behavior tends to be aggressive, while children that do not see aggressive behavior will probably not show an aggressive behavior (Research Methods Presentation).

An example of observational learning would be Bandura’s bobo dolls experiment in the 1960s (Bandura, Albert, Dorothea Ross, and Sheila A. Ross (1963)). Bandura created a video that he played to a group of small children who either saw an aggressive or non-aggressive video. One group of children were shown a model showing aggressive behaviour such as hitting, kicking and screaming towards the bobo doll. A second group of children were shown a non-aggressive video of the model. After playing the videos, the young children were sent into a playroom to play with these dolls. The overall conclusion of the experiment exhibited that the group that watched the aggressive video showed more aggressive acts towards the dolls than the group of children that seen the non-aggressive video. This theory provides a useful set of concepts that provides us with a more complex insight of how individuals can be guided down a path of anti-social behaviour through social interactions or observations. The theory surmises that a person’s genetic and biological endowment engenders a potential for aggression, while the specifics of truculent demeanour, its forms and frequency, the situations that evoke it and the targets towards which it is directed are acquired through

Bandura et al. (1963) studies are perhaps the most significant studies not only of their time, but also of the present. Bandura studies lead to the theory of social learning. The theory of social learning helps to explain how certain human behaviors, especially aggression, are acquired. Children and teenagers usually learn to resolve conflicts in the way they see models do so. These models can be from the TV, cartoons, sports figures, and especially their parents or guardians. Past studies indicate that children learn aggression seen and consequently exhibit aggression on real life events, (Bandura et al., 1963; Lovaas, 1962; Mowrer, 1961). Nevertheless, more recent studies indicate that children and adolescents still display the same tendencies, (Aroson et al., 2007; Piotrowski, 2005).

According to Bandura, Ross, & Ross (1961) aggression is cause from reward and punishment but yet through modeling and learning the behavior. To prove this, they set up an experiment to test aggression with a bobo doll. The researchers tested 72 children from ages 37 to 69 months with an average age of 52 months. The children were equal in sizes of boy to girl ratio. The children watched both a man and a female interact with the bobo doll. They both interact with the doll violently and non-violently. The group in the control group did not see anybody and just played in the room with the bobo doll on their own. The result showed that children that saw the violent attack on the bobo doll imitated the same when they saw the doll. Thus rendering that in fact children can learn aggression through modeling.

Alburt bandura was born December 4, 1925 in Mundare Canada. After graduating highschool bandura received a bachelors degree from the university of British Columbia he graduated with a bolocan award in psychology . He then did graduate work at the University of Iowa where he received a masters degree in 1951. He then received a doctorate in clinical psychology in 1952. Bandura accepted a 1 year instructorship at Stanford University where he very quickly got a professorship. After about two years he became the chairman og the psychology department. In 1961 Bandura conducted his most well known experiment known as the” bobo doll experiment” a study in which researchers physically and verbally abused a clown-faced inflatable toy in front of preschool-age

During the actually experiment each child was exposed to the scenario alone. This was done to make sure so other children did not get influenced by the other children. The first part was done involving one

The Bobo doll was a scientific experiment that results showed that children are more likely imitate the behaviour shown by a role model regardless of the actions that had taken place. Positive results included the child playing with a tinker toy or not acknowledging the Bobo doll. Whereas the negative results showed events such as the children attacking the Bobo doll in a distinctive manner as well as in extreme cases attacking the doll with a hammer. Children who had been exposed to the aggressive role had made far more imitative aggressive responses than those who were in the non-aggressive or control groups. This could be of importance when not only discussing child A but also Child B (Appendix 1). When Child A had been using sign language he was often rewarded by his parents for his communication, this would have had an effect on Child B as he had also begun to slow down his verbal communication and begun to pick up

In the Bobo Doll experiment conducted by Albert Bandura, researchers were interested in testing children’s behavior in response to their exposure to violence. This study was constructed with 72 children, 36 boys and 36 girls from Stanford University Nursery School. Before the study began, each child was individually scored on his or her level of aggression towards others, as rated by the experimenter and the child’s teacher. Then the children were separated into groups based on a similar score of aggression. The children were separated into three groups of 24 children. The three groups allowed the experimenter to create the conditions used to test the children’s response to violence, which was the independent variable, as it affects the children’s aggressive behavior, the dependent variable. The first group of subjects was the aggressive model group, where the subjects were presented in a