An Example of Social Learning Theory - BANDURA'S BOBO DOLL EXPERIMENT

Bandura et al (1961) investigated whether upon exposure to aggression in a role model, children would develop aggressive behaviour themselves.

The participants were 76 children - 36 boys & 36 girls in university daycare. The children were seperated into two mixed-gender groups, and one group watched a video of a woman acting violently towards a bobo doll. The other half were the control group, and were not exposed to the aggressive video.
All of the children were put into a room with many toys including a bobo doll, and levels of aggression in the children was measured by how much they hit the bobo doll.

The children mimicked the actions and sounds from the video - even taking the aggressive behaviour further by using weapons such as a toy hammer and gun. The group of children who watched the video showed more aggressive behaviour than the control group.

Bandura concluded that children who witness aggressive behaviour in adults are more likely to become aggressive themselves.

EVALUATION

This experiment was repeated many times over several years and still produced the same findings, even across other countries (high ecological validity!)

The only contradictory evidence for this theory is Charlton et al (2000), who found that people living on a secluded island (St. Helena) without television experienced no change in levels of aggression after television was introduced.

The children may have experienced demand characteristics as they weren't told not to hit the bobo doll, and after seeing a video of the doll being hit and then being subjected to one themselves they may have assumed that it was what they were expected to do. The video made the aggression towards the bobo doll look appealing, and no punishment was given for the aggressive behaviour by the other person.