Observable Agression

Observable Aggression

Krystal Mata

P10159143

Psychology 2301-E01

Online Course

10/12/2016

The highly acclaimed Bobo Doll experiment conducted by Albert Bandura is still widely cited and highly relevant today. It helps support Bandura’s social learning theory which states that learning takes place through the observation and emulation of others behaviors. It could have many implications regarding the reinforcement of primary caregivers to their children. If parents are seen as role models, this could cause many dangerous behaviors in a child’s future such as physical and emotional abuse, verbal abuse, as well as neglect.

Bandura’s study consisted of 72 children who ranged from ages 3-6, half of whom consisted of girls and boys. The children were then divided into three groups of 24 and then placed into a certain group, which were: adult aggressive model, adult non-aggressive model and no model. Each of the groups of boys and girls were then separated so that half of them were with a model of the same-sex or of the opposite sex. This tactic would help provide knowledge as to how the role model’s gender influenced the child’s behavior. Upon the experiment, a child was placed into a room with a female or male adult and interacted with toys for 10 minutes. During the aggressive setting, the adult would act violently with the Bobo Doll. The adult would throw, kick, and scream the doll and would even prohibit abuse with a hammer. During the non-aggressive setting, the adult ignored the Bobo Doll and instead played calmly with a tinker toy set for the full 10 minutes. However in the control setting, an adult was not present with the child thus leaving the child to play with the toys by himself. The children were then exposed to the Mild Aggression Arousal Stage and Delayed Imitation Test where the child was in a room filled with both aggressive and nonaggressive toys for 20 minutes. 

It was later found that children in the aggressive setting acted more violent towards their counterparts then in the other settings. There was also more non-imitative aggression in the aggressive group. Furthermore, the gender of the adult had an effect where the male children acted more aggressively than the female children when paired with an aggressive male model. All around, boys acted more physically aggressive than the girls. Girls were more aggressive verbally when placed in the aggressive same-sex model. In all, boys were more prone to act aggressively than girls when placed in an aggressive model setting.