Bandura's Study (1961)

Aim and Hypotheses

The aim of Bandura's study was to demonstrate that if children were passive witnesses to an aggressive display by an adult they would imitate this aggressive behaviour when given the opportunity.

1. Children exposed to aggressive roles models will reproduce aggressive acts resembling those of the models.

2. Children exposed to non-aggressive models will reproduce less aggressive acts.

3. Children will imitate the behaviour of a same-sex model more so that an model of the opposite sex.

4. Boys will be more predisposed than girls towards imitating aggression.

Procedure

• The sample was made up of 72 children (36 boys and 36 girls) aged between 37 and 69 months (average age was 52 months), they were all from Stanford University Nursery School.
• It was a lab experiment and the children were split into 8 experimental groups of 6 children, with the remaining 24 children making up the control group.
• The groups were the 'aggressive condition', where children witnessed an adult being aggressive towards a Bobo doll, the 'non-aggressive condition' where they watched an adult playing and ignoring the Bobo doll and the control group.
• The groups were further sub divided by their sex and by the sex of the model that they were exposed to. Within each group, there were 6 boys with the same sex model, 6 boys with an opposite sex model, 6 girls with the same sex model and 6 girls with the opposite sex model.
• Researchers tried to reduce the issue of extraneous variables, such as some children being naturally more aggressive, by pre-testing the children for how aggressive they were. They carried out an observation of the children in the nursery and judged their aggressive behaviour on four 5 point rating scales. The children were then matched in each group so that they had similar levels of aggression in their everyday behaviour; there was high inter-rater reliability…