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Bobo Doll Experiment Essay

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Do you believe that human behavior is inherited through genetic factors or learned through social imitation? According to Albert Bandura,conducted an examination to investigate if social behaviors can be seized by observation and imitation. They set up an experiment called “The Bobo Doll Experiment” to test their hypothesis. A Bobo Doll is an inflatable toy, usually with the design of a clown. The doll has weight at the bottom so it may remain standing; for example, when you punch the doll it’ll go down but then the weight will lift it back up. They put an adult model in a room with a group of children and examined if the kids would mimic the adults behavior. Some adults acted as if the doll was irrelevant and others showed aggression towards the doll. …show more content…

The children were then separated into groups with the similar level of aggression. There are 72 children, 24 are shown an aggressive role model, 6 girls and 6 boys are shown a female model, and another 6 boys and 6 girls are shown a male model. The next group of 24 children are divided the exact same way except that this time they are non aggressive role models. The last group of 24 children have no role model. That is their control group. The children were inserted in a room filled with toys (including the Bobo Doll). The “aggressive” role models would shout “Pow!” and “Boom!” while punching and throwing the doll around. Meanwhile, the non aggressive role model would play normally with the other toys in the room. Later, each child was taken into a room with similar toys. As soon as they started playing with the toys, the experimenter told them those toys were her finest toys and they were reserved for the other children. That caused the children to get

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