'Do Aggression' By Bandura And Ross

Albert Bandura’s results of the experiment sustained three of the four original predictions that were made. The first being that the children who were exposed to the aggressive model had the exact behavior they had observed when the adult was no longer in sight. Second, Bandura also foresaw that experimental children in the non-aggressive group would behave much less aggressive than those who were exposed to aggression. The results of the experiment indicated that while children of both genders in the non-aggressive group did exhibit less aggression than the control group, boys who had observed an opposite-sex model behave non-aggressively were more likely than those in the control group to engage in

The fundamentals of the social learning theory significantly describe offenders and their criminal behavior which is learned based on observation and imitation. A researcher by the name of Albert Bandura along with coworkers tested the social learning theory with several experiments on children and their imitation of aggression based on what they saw and were exposed to. Bandura’s focus was to prove that human behavior such as aggression is learned through social imitations and copying the actions of others. Walters (1966) gives details about the Bobo doll experiment and explains its purpose related to learning a violent behavior based on observation. In the experiment, the tested subjects were children of both sexes, ranging from the ages of three to six years. Some of the children were exposed to a non-aggressive adult, while the other children were placed in a room with an aggressive adult who would both physically and verbally attack the Bobo doll. The control group in the experiment was not exposed to any adult. During the second phase of the experiment, the children were left in a room by themselves with the toys, and watched to see if they would demonstrate the aggressive behavior like that of which they observed adults doing earlier. Walter (1966) describes the results as “children who had been exposed to an aggressive model showed more imitative physical and verbal

The final phase of this process is the motivation for the behavior. In Bandura’s experiment the children observed an adult praised for behaving badly, and this is enough, under Bandura’s theory, to cement those actions into a repeatable response by the child at a later stage. Bandura believes this theory also supports the rise in the number of aggressive teens in high crime areas (Isom, 1998).

However, are women still as aggressive as men? To test women's aggressive acts to conclude if women are submissive by nature or gender stereotypes, reconstructing a well known observational experiment conducted by Philip Zimbardo, will be done. Creating an environment with men and women in both guard/prisoner positions, altering the experiment to test aggression on women, it will show that gender roles have little to do with acts of aggression, rather such behaviors stem from genetic predisposition and biological influences. When faced with a chance to participate in aggression acts of dominance, women will be less violent and aggressive to inmates than men given the same

This supports the Social Learning Theories of aggression as the children learnt through observation of the role model, imitation of their behaviour and behaviour shaping. Also they received sweets and praise as a form of positive vicarious reinforcement thus meaning that there was a chance of repetition of the aggressive behaviour outside the laboratory setting. The vicarious reinforcement is also a direct consequence that will have an effect on the chances of the child repeating the behaviour. As if the child was punished they would have been less likely to act aggressively again.

Children need guidance and personal example from the adults around them to help them learn what is acceptable and what behaviour isn’t acceptable. Behaviour is greatly influenced by primary socialisation and children will react and take in how close family members act. Bandura developed the modelling idea where children would copy the adults around them. “There is much evidence that a child who witnesses or experiences violence at home may develop aggressive tendencies.” There are a number of different types of behaviour these include assertive, aggressive, submissive and manipulative behaviour.

At an early age boys are presented the idea of the hyper-aggressive male by family, friends, media, and the young boy is taught, or feels the need to fill into that

The first stage of the experiment is called modeling. In this stage the children were individually shown into a room where they would sit in one corner and pay with potato prints and pictures and the adult sat in the other corner with a mallet and the Bobo doll. In the first group, 24 children would watch a male or female adult abuse the doll both physically (kicked, punched, threw, and hit with different objects) and verbally (made aggressive and non-aggressive statements). In the second group, 24 children were exposed to adult who played quietly in the corner with the toys but avoiding the Bobo doll. The third group, 24 children were not exposed to neither an aggressive or non-aggressive adult. After 10 minutes went by, the adult in both groups left the

Some children may not have any experience playing violent video games at all. (3) The gender of the children would also be a factor because usually boys are more likely to have a predisposition towards aggression than girls. Boys would also more likely have more experience playing certain kinds of video games, especially violent games, where there may be hitting or fighting. Violent video games would possibly affect boys more than girls and there is the possibility that some girls may have no experience or familiarity with violent video games at all. The background conditions of the child’s home environment would also contribute to the results garnered from the experiment. A child from a broken, dysfunctional home may have previously exposed to violence and may use violence and aggression as a way of natural expression as opposed to a child from a stable and enriched home environment. The child from a stable home may have a very different upbringing, being taught very early on to have a negative sentiment towards violence and though familiar with video games, may not even have been allowed or exposed to video games of a violent nature. These factors would affect Andersen’s findings and therefore need to be controlled in order to obtain an accurate result from the experiment.

In 1961 the famous Bobo doll experiment was conducted to investigate social behaviors that are acquired by reinforcement techniques. The experiment itself consisted of a modeling methods which tested 36 boys and 36 girls between the ages 3 to 6. The method used in the Bobo doll experiment was controlled by the physical researchers. The experiment itself was divided by aggressive, non-aggressive and a control models, while the children played the researches recorded the children’s behavior every 5 seconds for 20 minutes. The end conclusion of the Bobo dolls experiment is that children learn social behavior such as aggression through the process of observation learning by watching the behavior of another person.

Children exposed to aggressive models will reproduce aggressive acts resembling those of the models. The observation of non-aggressive models will have an inhibiting effect on the subjects future behavior. Subjects will imitate the behavior of a same-sex model to a greater degree than a model of the opposite sex. Boys will be more predisposed than girls towards imitating aggression (Diessner, 2008).

Because of this competition, males are thought to be more aggressive than females. (Bartek, 1999)

Because males tend to value influential goals such as status among peers, they will typically use overt forms of aggression and gradually incorporate relational forms (Grotpeter & Crick, 1996). The choice of aggression could be linked to the social roles of males and females, the verbal maturity, or the social dynamics in peer relationships.

These results correlate highly with the social learning theory on aggressive behavior. Those exposed to substantial violence and aggression were likely to imitate it later on in life. However, while an observational study can elicit enlightening results, they do not provide much on practical, empirical evidence. What the researchers did was observe behavior exhibited by the individuals they studied; they did not control the amount of violence the individuals were being exposed nor were they preventing others from being exposed to such programming. Thus, this study can not be deemed as an “experiment”. While they tried eliminating the lurking variables that may plague the results of their findings, it would be impossible to eliminate every possible influence other than the television exposure through an observational study.

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