Evaluation of a Social Psychological Theory of Aggression Essay

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

11. Other observation can be debriefing we can explain the experiment to the children as well as find out more individual information and feelings of each child had about the experiment to get a better picture. We could also conduct a survey using a Likert scale after the experiment is over to see how the kids view their behavior and whether they thought it was aggressive or

Behaviorists argue that people are not born with a violent disposition; rather they learn to think and act violently as a result of their everyday experiences (Bandura, 1977). Albert Bandura (1977) states behavior is learned from the environment through the process of observational learning. This popular behavioral notion is known as the social learning theory. Bandura believes that humans are active information processors and think about the relationship between their behavior and its consequences. Studies of family life, for example, show that aggressive children often model the violent behaviors of their parents. In 1961, Bandura conducted the famous bobo doll experiment in which children observed the people around them behaving in various ways. The experiment involved exposing children to two different adult models; an aggressive model and a non-aggressive one. After observing the adults and their aggressive or non-aggressive behavior, the children were later allowed to play in a room with the Bobo doll by themselves. When they played with the doll by themselves, alone in a room, they began to imitate the actions they had previously observed by the adults. The children who had observed the adults aggressively playing with the doll imitated a similar aggressive behavior while playing with the doll alone. Those who observed the

Practically since the beginning of television many, parents, teachers, legislators and mental health professionals have desired to grasp the impact of television programs, mainly on children. Mainly on the concern has been the portrayal of violence, predominantly given by psychologist Albert Bandura's work in the 1970s on social learning and the tendency of children to imitate what they see. In general,” the more aggressive the people or films that children observe, the more aggressive the children act. Learning by watching and imitating others, rather than through one's own personal experiences, is called social learning. Later research has shown that viewing violent acts on TV and in the movies affects people in other negative ways: (1) It

In 1961 Albert Bandura and two of his colleagues set out to find empirical evidence to support his Social Learning Theory, which is the "theory that we learn social behavior by observing and imitating and by being rewarded and punished.” (Myers 162) The “Transmission of Aggression Through Imitation of Aggressive Models,” is more famously known as the Bobo doll study. The Bobo doll study tested children's susceptibility to aggressive tendencies by exposing them to adult models who exhibited aggressive behaviors and observing how the child expressed frustration later on away from the adult model.

Modeling, according to Bandura, was a form of observational learning. Observational learning is learning through watching. According to Bandura, social behavior is passed down from each generation, in all societies. Behavioral patterns are usually observed by the younger age group and help a child develop. If the role model of the younger child is aggressive, it is more than likely the child will grow up with aggressive tendencies. The concept of modeling being a predisposing risk factor for aggression can be seen through Bandura’s BOBO doll study. Bandura and his research team escorted 4-year-olds into a play area with toys. While the experimental group of kids was playing with the toys, an adult entered the room and started acting violent with the BOBO doll, knocking it down, kicking and punching it, and shouting vulgarities at the doll. Later on, when the children were playing alone with the BOBO doll, they started to have aggressive tendencies, yelling at the BOBO doll and punching and kicking it violently, mocking the actions modeled by the adult previously. This experiment clearly showed Bandura’s hypothesis of modeling being a prompting risk factor for aggression. The children who are very impressionable at a young age and therefore imitated the adult, believing that the aggressive action was the correct action. This shows that a model

Cognitive theory is one of the five developmental theories in developmental psychology. Found within cognitive theory is social cognitive theory. Social cognitive theory suggests that children and adults can learn novel responses merely by observing the behavior of a model, and make mental notes as they observe these responses. They use these mental representations to reproduce the observed model’s behavior. This theory belongs to psychologist, Alfred Bandura. Bandura thought humans to be cognitive beings and that the information they processed played huge role in their learning and development. One of his known study’s is the Bobo doll study. This study demonstrated that children can display aggressive behaviors through observing aggressive responses without using classical or operant conditioning. In Bandura’s experiment, he had children watch a short clip that included an adult model hitting an inflatable doll with a mallet as well as throwing balls at the doll while shouting random words. Some children saw the adult model being praised and others saw the adult model being punished. In addition, others saw the model receive no consequences for their aggressive actions. After this, children were brought into a playroom filled with the inflatable bobo dolls. Children who saw a rewarded or no-consequence model, acted aggressively. From this scenario, there is also latent learning where there is learning that occurs, but is not evident in the person’s behavior. The children

Every night on the news there are reports about murders, wars, and rapes. But the news isn't the only place where people encounter violent or aggressive behavior. Driving home from work, people get cut off and cussed at on a daily basis. At school, children fight over who will be the first in the lunch line. On the street, people get pushed out of the way if they are not walking fast enough. The list could go on and on and on. The point is that humans exhibit aggressive behavior on a regular basis. However, does anyone know why people display these behaviors? Why do certain people seem more aggressive? Is there just one thing that controls when and how aggressive someone becomes? These are

They hypothesized when children are presented with either aggressive or nonaggressive behaviors from their models, the children will readily imitate the behaviors. The test subjects in this case were pre-school aged children from the Stanford University Nursery; 36 males and 36 females aged from 37 months to 69 months, the mean age being 52 months. In this study, the independent variable was either an aggressive or a nonaggressive model. The aggressive models would spend their first minute quietly playing with the toys in the room and would spend the rest of the time using a sequence of aggression they repeated three times: laid Bobo on its side, sat on it and punched it in the nose, raised it, struck it on the head with a mallet, tossed it aggressively and kicked it around the room. The children in the control group were given no adult model. The dependent variable was the imitative physical aggression displayed by the children; three judges recorded the children’s behavior every five seconds for 20 minutes, whether the child had struck the Bobo doll with the mallet, sat on it and punched it in the nose, kicked it, or tossed it in the air. The children who observed the aggressive model had higher levels of imitative physical aggression (M = 12.725, p < .001) than the children who observed the nonaggressive model (M = 1.05) and the control (M = 1.6) groups. It is important to note this is experimental research. This is when the scientist uses a systematic and scientific approach to the scientific method where variables are manipulated. In this study a behavioral perspective was taken as how the behaviors of the children were affected by certain role models. Bandura, Ross, and Ross concluded at the end of this study the observation of cues produced by the behavior of others is effective in eliciting a certain response.

Bandura’s experiment is a true study, which is the only type of research that can determine causality (Belsky, 2013) – page 28); therefore, this study can determine causality. The results of the experiment show that when children are exposed to hostile models, they tend to also act aggressively. This study is important because it shows that children copy aggressive behaviors (Durkin, 1995). Implying that either exposure to violence thru TV or in real life environment, such as school or household, can lead to aggressive behaviors in children. Consequently, it is important that parents and caregivers avoid exposing children to violence.

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.

Explain how aggression is learned according to the Social Learning Theory proposed by Bandura & Todo, 2003).

Other related theories, such as the Social Learning theory (Bandura, 1977), states that people gain aggressive behaviour by either direct experience or by observation. The Script theory by Huesmann (1994) is similar to the Social Learning theory, however it assumes that children learn aggressive ‘scripts’ or behaviour by observing violence in the mass media and video games. Scripts are unconsciously learned and re-enacted in similar situations (Huesmann, 1994).

It has been suggested that exposure to media violence from an early age desensitises children to aggression and normalises aggressive behaviour (Eron, 1982). Television violence and aggressive acts may promote aggression as a behaviour that helps individuals to achieve their goals.

Findings from analysis and research, experts have come up with several theories explaining this phenomenon. The first one is observational-learning theory and imitation. At a young age, children begin to observe and imitate their parents, siblings, peers, or media characters. According to this theory, the viewer will acquire the observed behavior when the model performing the behavior is similar to or attractive to the viewer, which in this case the viewer is the child. The viewer identifies with the model, and believes that the context is real and observes that the viewed behavior is rewarded (C.A. Anderson et al., 2003). More recent research shows that children can learn complex social scripts from observation. In the future, the scripts will be a cognitive guide for their behavior. I think this theory is very realistic, for instance often adults who were abused as a child tend to past that tendency onto how they discipline their own child. They may have repeatedly observed their own violent parent and so they have learned to use aggression to resolve interpersonal problems. So as a result of mental rehearsing and repeated exposure, this approach to