AS level Psychology The Core Studies The developmental approach Behaviourist & Social Learning perspective

Psychology Developmental Psychology Bandura, Ross and Ross (1961)

Bandura, Ross & Ross The Bobo Doll Study

The Question The nature - nurture debate Do children learn behaviour from the behaviour they observe around them?

Specifically……. Can aggressive behaviour be learned by observation? NB: This was one of the studies that triggered the TV violence debate

Getting started: 1 List two behaviours you think a child might learn by observing other people 2 List two behaviours you think could not be learned in this way

Bandura, Ross & Ross The BOBO doll study The participants 72 children (Stanford University nursery school) 36 boys & 36 girls age range 37 months - 69 months Mean age 52 months

Bandura, Ross & Ross The BOBO doll study TWO adult ‘role models’ one male and one female and a female experimenter

Bandura, Ross & Ross The BOBO doll study Method - an experiment there were three conditions 24 children in each condition

Bandura, Ross & Ross The BOBO doll study First IV Non aggressive condition Aggressive condition Control condition

Bandura, Ross & Ross The BOBO doll study Second IV Children observed either a MALE or FEMALE role model 12 children in each

Bandura, Ross & Ross The BOBO doll study Third IV Gender of the child Child was male or female

Bandura, Ross & Ross The BOBO doll study Thus 6 boys saw aggressive male 6 boys saw non-aggressive male 6 boys saw aggressive female 6 boys saw non-aggressive female

Bandura, Ross & Ross The BOBO doll study Thus 6 girls saw aggressive female 6 girls saw non-aggressive female 6 girls saw aggressive male 6 girls saw non-aggressive male

Bandura, Ross & Ross The BOBO doll study Level 1 Independent Variable (IV) aggressive or non-aggressive role model Level 2 Independent variable (IV) Same sex or opposite sex role model

Bandura, Ross & Ross The BOBO doll study Write a TESTABLE two-tailed hypothesis for the study Write a TESTABLE one-tailed hypothesis for the study

Bandura, Ross & Ross The BOBO doll study The matching process To ensure that each group contained equally aggressive children they were rated for aggression before the experiment rated on physical aggression, verbal aggression aggression to inanimate objects aggression inhibition (self control)

Bandura, Ross & Ross The BOBO doll study What happened then? Children taken one at a time Phase one of the experiment Modelling the behaviour phase

Bandura, Ross & Ross The BOBO doll study What happened then? Phase two of the experiment The AROUSAL phase This was necessary to provoke the children so that they were equally likely to display any aggressive behaviour they had learned

Bandura, Ross & Ross The BOBO doll study What happened then? Phase three of the experiment The OBSERVATION phase Child left alone in play room to which a ‘mini’ Bobo and mallet had been added

Bandura, Ross & Ross The BOBO doll study What was observed? The criteria Imitative aggression Non-imitative aggression both physical & verbal e.g. hitting Bobo with mallet

Bandura, Ross & Ross The BOBO doll study Who observed? More than one observer How long for? For 20 minutes in 5 second time samples 240 observation samples for each child

Bandura, Ross & Ross The BOBO doll study Examples of behaviour observed

Bandura, Ross & Ross The BOBO doll study The results IMITATION - the children in the aggressive condition imitated many of the modelled physical and verbal aggressive behaviours

Bandura, Ross & Ross The BOBO doll study The results IMITATION - the children in the NON- aggressive condition imitated very few of the modelled behaviour 70% had zero scores

Bandura, Ross & Ross The BOBO doll study The results NON-IMITATION the children in the aggressive condition displayed more non-imitative (non-copied) aggressive behaviour

Bandura, Ross & Ross The BOBO doll study The results NON-AGGRESSIVE CONDITION the children in the non-aggressive condition spent more time playing with the toys (dolls etc) also more time doing nothing

Bandura, Ross & Ross The BOBO doll study GENDER RESULTS Boys imitated more physical aggression (but not verbal)

Bandura, Ross & Ross The BOBO doll study GENDER RESULTS Boys more aggressive after watching MALE aggressive model Girls more aggressive after watching FEMALE aggressive model

Bandura, Ross & Ross The BOBO doll study The conclusion Learning can take place by observation Children more likely to learn from same sex models

Bandura, Ross & Ross The BOBO doll study The conclusion Bandura suggested Freud’s theory of identification may be used to explain how learning took place Thinking point: Which of Freud’s stages might these children have been in?

Bandura, Ross & Ross The BOBO doll study Consider: BPS guidelines – Was this study ethical? What are the issues? If not ethical WHY not?

Bandura, Ross & Ross The BOBO doll study Methodology Does this study have ecological validity? If not ecologically valid - why not?

Bandura, Ross & Ross The BOBO doll study The participants To whom can we generalise the findings?

Bandura, Ross & Ross The BOBO doll study The debate about whether children learn aggressive behaviour from watching violence on TV How might watching TV differ from the experience of the children in the Bandura experiment?

Bandura, Ross & Ross The BOBO doll study There were four predictions (hypotheses) in this MATCHED SUBJECTS experiment What were they?