Can video games make children violent? Can true-crime shows turn children into killers? All these statements assume that children are highly impressionable and will imitate what they see. This is exactly what Bandura set out to investigate in his famous Bandura Bobo doll experiment. Let's see whether children's behaviour is truly influenced by the content they consume or if it is all a myth.
- First, we'll outline the aim of Bandura's Bobo doll experiment.
Next, we'll go through the Albert Bandura Bobo doll experiment steps to better understand the procedure used by experimenters.
Then, we'll describe the key findings of the Bandura Bobo doll 1961 study and what they tell us about social learning.
Moving on, we'll evaluate the study, including the Albert Bandura Bobo doll experiment ethical issues.
Finally, we'll provide Bandura's Bobo doll experiment summary.
Fig. 1 - Many people claim that media can make children aggressive. Bandura's Bobo doll study investigated how the content that children see affects their behaviour.
Aim of Bandura's Bobo Doll Experiment
Between 1961 and 1963, Albert Bandura conducted a series of experiments, the Bobo Doll experiments. These experiments later became the key pieces of support for his famous Social Learning Theory, which has shifted the focus of psychology from a behaviourist to a cognitivist perspective of behaviour.
Let's go back to 1961, when Bandura sought to investigate whether children can learn behaviours solely from observing adults. He believed that children who will watch the adult model act aggressively towards a Bobo doll would imitate their behaviour when given a chance to play with the same doll.
In the 1960s, behaviourism prevailed. It was common to believe that learning can only occur through personal experience and reinforcement; we repeat rewarded actions and stop those punished. Bandura's experiments offer a different perspective.
Method of Bandura's Bobo Doll Experiment
Bandura et al. (1961) recruited children from Stanford University nursery to test their hypothesis. Seventy-two children (36 girls and 36 boys) aged three to six participated in his laboratory experiment.
Bandura used a matched pair design when dividing the participants into the three experimental groups. Children were first assessed for their aggression levels by two observers and divided into groups in a way that ensured similar levels of aggression across groups. Each group consisted of 12 girls and 12 boys.
Bandura Bobo Doll: Independent and Dependent Variables
There were four independent variables:
- Presence of a model (present or not)
- Model's behaviour (aggressive or non-aggressive)
- Model's sex (same or opposite to the child's sex)
- Child's sex (male or female)
The dependent variable measured was the child's behaviour; this included physical and verbal aggression and the number of times the child used a mallet. The researchers also measured how many imitative and non-imitative behaviours children engaged in.
Albert Bandura Bobo Doll Experiment Steps
Let's look at the Albert Bandura bobo doll experiment steps.
Bandura Bobo Doll: Stage 1
In the first stage, the experimenter led children into a room with toys, where they could play with stamps and stickers. Children were also exposed to an adult model playing in another corner of the room during this time; this stage lasted 10 minutes.
There were three experimental groups; the first group saw a model act aggressively, the second group saw a non-aggressive model, and the third group did not see a model. In the first two groups, half were exposed to a same-sex model the other half observed a model of the opposite sex.
For example, the model would hit the doll with a hammer and throw it in the air. They would also use verbal aggression by screaming things like “hit him!”.
Group 2: Children watched a non-aggressive model. This group saw the model enter the room and play unobtrusively and quietly with a tinker toy set.
Group 3: The last group was a control group that was not exposed to any model.
Bandura Bobo Doll: Stage 2
The researchers brought each child separately to a room with attractive toys in the second stage. As soon as the child started playing with one of the toys, the experimenter stopped them, explaining that these toys were special and reserved for other children.
This phase was referred to as mild aggression arousal, and its purpose was to induce frustration in children.
Bandura Bobo Doll: Stage 3
In stage three, each child was placed in a separate room with aggressive toys and some non-aggressive toys. They were left alone with the toys in the room for approximately 20 minutes while researchers observed them through a one-way mirror and assessed their behaviour.
Researchers also noted which children's behaviour was imitative of the model's behaviour and which were new (non-imitative).
Aggressive Toys | Non-aggressive Toys |
Dart Guns | Tea Set |
Hammer | Three Teddy Bears |
Bobo Doll (6 Inches Tall) | Crayons |
Pegboard | Plastic Farm Animal Figurines |
Findings of Bandura Bobo Doll 1961 Experiment
We'll examine how each independent variable influenced children's behaviour.
Bandura Bobo Doll: Presence of the model
Some children in the control group (that didn't see the model) showed aggression, such as hammer hitting or gunplay.
The control condition showed lower aggression than the group that saw an aggressive model and slightly higher aggression than the one that saw a non-aggressive model.
Bandura Bobo Doll: Model's behaviour
The group that saw an aggressive model displayed the most aggressive behaviour compared to the other two groups.
Children who observed the aggressive model displayed both imitative and non-imitative aggression (aggressive acts not displayed by the model).
Bandura Bobo Doll: Model's sex
Girls displayed more physical aggression after watching an aggressive male model but showed more verbal aggression when the model was female.
Boys imitated the aggressive male models more than when observing aggressive female models.
Child's sex
Conclusion of Bandura Bobo Doll 1961 Experiment
Bandura concluded that children could learn from the observation of adult models. Children tended to imitate what they saw the adult model do. This suggests that learning can occur without reinforcement (rewards and punishments). These findings led Bandura to develop the Social Learning Theory.
The Social Learning Theory highlights the importance of one's social context in learning. It proposes that learning can occur through observation and imitation of other people.
The findings also suggest that boys are more likely to engage in aggressive behaviour, Bandura et al. (1961) linked this to cultural expectations. Since it's more culturally acceptable for boys to be aggressive, this could influence children's behaviour, resulting in the sex differences that we see in the experiment.
This could also explain why children of both sexes were more likely to imitate physical aggression when the model was male; it is more acceptable to see a male model act physically aggressive, which could encourage imitation.
Verbal aggression was similar in girls and boys; this was linked to the fact that verbal aggression is culturally acceptable for both sexes.
In the case of verbal aggression, we also see that same-sex models were more influential. Bandura explained that identification with the model, which often occurs when the model is similar to us, can encourage greater imitation.
Fig. 3 - Photos from Bandura's study illustrating the adult model attacking the doll and children imitating the model's behaviour.
Bandura Bobo Doll Experiment: Evaluation
One strength of Bandura's experiment is that it was conducted in a laboratory where researchers could control and manipulate the variables. This allows researchers to establish the cause and effect of a phenomenon.
Bandura’s (1961) study also used a standardised procedure, which allowed replication of the study. Bandura himself repeated the study several times in the 1960s, with slight changes in the phases. The study findings remained consistent throughout the replications, suggesting the findings had high reliability.
One limitation of Bandura's experiment is that it only tested children right after exposure to the model. It is, therefore unclear whether the children engaged in behaviours they 'learnt' ever again after leaving the laboratory.
Other studies also suggest that imitation in this study could be due to the novelty of the Bobo doll. It's likely that the children have never played with a Bobo doll before, which made them more likely to imitate the way they saw a model play with it.
Replication of Bandura’s Research in 1965
In 1965, Bandura and Walter repeated this study, but with slight modifications.
They investigated whether the consequences of the model's behaviour would influence imitation.
The experiment showed children were more likely to imitate the model's behaviour if they saw a model be rewarded for it than when they saw the model be punished or those who faced no consequences.
Albert Bandura Bobo Doll Experiment Ethical Issues
The Bobo doll experiment prompted ethical concerns. For starters, children were not protected from harm, as the observed hostility could have upset the children. Furthermore, the violent behaviour they learned in the experiment may have stayed with them and caused later behavioural issues.
The children were unable to give informed consent or withdraw from the study and would be stopped by the researchers if they tried to leave. There was no attempt to debrief them about the study later or explain to them that the adult was merely acting.
Nowadays, these ethical issues would prevent researchers from carrying out the study if it was to be replicated.
Bandura's Bobo Doll Experiment: Summary
In summary, Bandura's Bobo doll experiment demonstrated social learning of aggression in children in a laboratory environment.
The behaviour of the adult model that children watched subsequently influenced the children's behaviour. The children who watched an aggressive model displayed the greatest number of aggressive behaviours across experimental groups.
These findings support Bandura's Social Learning Theory, which highlights the importance of our social environment in learning. This study also made people more aware of the potential influence of the behaviours that children are exposed to on how they'll behave.
Fig 4 - The Social Learning Theory highlights the role of observation and imitation in acquiring new behaviours.
Bandura Bobo Doll - Key takeaways
Bandura sought to investigate whether children can learn aggressive behaviours solely from observing adults.
Children who participated in Bandura's study saw an adult play aggressively with a doll, in a non-aggressive way or didn't see a model at all.
Bandura concluded that children could learn from the observation of adult models. The group that saw the aggressive model displayed the most aggression, while the group that saw the non-aggressive model displayed the least aggression.
The strengths of Bandura's study are that it was a controlled laboratory experiment, which used a standardised procedure and has been successfully replicated.
However, it's uncertain whether the imitation was caused only due to the novelty of the Bobo doll and whether it had a long-term effect on children's behaviour. Moreover, there are some ethical criticisms of the study design.
References
- Albert Bandura, Influence of models’ reinforcement contingencies on the acquisition of imitative responses. Journal of personality and social psychology, 1(6), 1965
- Fig. 3 - Bobo Doll Deneyi by Okhanm is licensed by CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
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