Bandura, Ross and RossTransmission of aggression through imitation of aggressivemodels.
Aim: To see whetherchildren will imitate an aggressive role model. To see if the children would bemore likely to imitate a same sex role model. To see if boys are more aggressivethan girls.
Procedure: 36 boysand 36 girls from Stanford University Nursery School. Range from 3 years to 5years – mean 4.4 yrs
There were three main conditions – the aggressive condition, non-aggressive condition and the control group.
The children in the aggressive and non-aggressive condition werefurther subdivided by sex and the sex of the role model they were exposed to.
Three independent variables - The condition the children were exposedto, the sex of the role model and the sex of the child.
The children were tested individually.
In stage one of the experiment children were brought to the experimental room by the experimenter. The room was set out for play and the
activities were chosen because they had been noted to have high interest for nursery school children, and included a Bobo doll.
In the non-aggressive condition, the model ignored Bobo and assembledthe tinker-toys in a quiet, gentle manner.
In the aggressive condition themodel began by assembling the tinker-toys, but after one minute turned to Boboand was aggressive to the doll in a very stylised and distinctiveway.
After ten minutes the experimenter entered and took the child to a newroom which the child was told was another games room.
In stage two the child was subjected to ‘mild aggression arousal’. Thechild was taken to a room with relatively attractive toys. As soon as the childstarted to play with the toys the experimenter told the child that these werethe experimenter’s very best toys and she had decided to reserve them for theother children.
Then the child was taken to the next room for stage three of the studywhere the child was told it could play with any of the toys in there. In this
room there was a variety of both non-aggressive and aggressive toys. The childwas kept in this room for 20 minutes during which time their behaviour wasobserved by judges through a one-way mirror.
Findings:
The children in the aggressive model condition made more aggressive responses than the children in the non-aggressive modelcondition.
Boys made more aggressive responses than girls.
Boys in the aggressive model condition showed more aggressive responses if the model was male than if the model was female.
The girls in the aggressivemodel conditions also showed more physical aggressive responses if themodel was male but more verbal aggressive responses if the model wasfemale.
On average girls copied 5.5 aggressive actsif the model was female and 7.2 aggressive acts if the model was male.
Boys copied 25.8 aggressive acts when the model was male.
On average 12.7 aggressive acts were imitated from the aggressivemodel
Conclusion:
The findings support Bandura’s Social Learning Theory. That is, children learn social behaviour such as aggression through the process of observation learning– through watching the behaviour of anotherperson.
Evaluation:
Generalisability:
Study conducted in one nursery setting, and only on children. These findingsmay be different for children who do not regularly attend nursery, or todifferent age groups. Also as this took place in the USA it may be culturallybiased and other cultures may be different.
Reliability:
Two judges were used to measure the behaviour to ensure there was inter-rater reliability. Aggressive behaviour was operationalised so cause and effect conclusions could be made. A standardised procedure was followed, including the set up of each room and what children saw, this means it is replicable.
Application:
This study is useful in showing the effects of role models on aggressive behaviour. This supports the role of the watershed and rating certificates on films and video games.
Validity:
The situation was not natural, and it may be that children were simply doing what they though adults expected of them ‘Look mummy, there’s the doll we had to hit’. This suggests the children may have responded to demand characteristics. This study only measured behaviour within the experiment and it is not known whether the effects were long lasting.
Ethics:
Children witnessed verbal and physical aggressive acts and copied them. This could be seen as unethical as was encouraging children to behave in undesirable ways.
