OCR AS Psychology: Core Studies - Bandura, Ross and Ross (2)

M&P: 72 children; 36 boys and 36 girls; aged between 37 and 69 months (mean age = 52 months); 1 male/female adult role model; Lab experiment; 3 conditions: Group exposed to an aggressive role model, group exposed to a passive model and a control group (no role model).

Aggressive role model condition: 6 boys same-sex model (male); 6 boys opposite-sex model (female); 6 girls same-sex model (female); 6 girls opposite-sex model (male) (Same for the non-aggressive role model condition). There were 24 participants in all 3 groups.

3 IVs: Condition (aggressive/non-aggressive/control group); gender of role model; gender of child.

Controls: The number of children in each group was quite small (six) and the results could have been distorted if one group had 3 children who were normally quite aggressive. e.g. if the 6 boys in the group were already aggressive when they witnessed an aggresive display by a male role model, they would be the most aggressive. However, this could mean these 6 boys were already the most aggressive children. This was reduced as the researches pre-tested the children on how aggressive they were. They did this by observing the children in a nursery and rated their aggression using a 5-point rating scale. They then matched the children on their similar levels of aggression. Therefore, this experiment is also a matched-pairs design. The rating scales for the pre-rating of the aggression were: phsyical/verbal aggression; aggresstion towards inanimate objects; aggressive inhibition.