Evaluation of Bandura's study

A weakness of Bandura's study being a lab experiment is that it lacks ecological validity, as the environment the children were tested in wasn't realistic to real life. For example, in Bandura's study, how aggression was shown wasn't realistic to real life. The adult model was aggressive towards an inflatable Bobo doll and so were some of the children in stage 3. Although this shows aggression, it could be classed as 'play' aggression. This is a weakness because although we know that the children became more aggressive towards the doll, it doesn't mean that they would become aggressive towards people when in a real-life situation. Therefore, the findings may not generalise.

One strength of Bandura's study being a lab experiment is that it has high levels of control over confounding variables. For example, Bandura could control the child's natural level of aggression and prevent it from affecting the results by matching the children on aggression before the main study began. This is a strength because it allows Bandura to more clearly cause and effect in that it was the model that caused the differences in aggression and so the model affected the aggression rather than individual differences in the P's.