4. The Question
• The nature - nurture debate
• Do children learn behaviour from the behaviour
they observe around them?
5. Specifically…….
• Can aggressive behaviour be learned by
observation?
• NB: This was one of the studies that triggered
the TV violence debate
6. 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
Getting started:
7. 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
8. Bandura, Ross & Ross
The Bobo doll study
Two adult ‘role models’
• one male and one female
• and a female experimenter
9. Bandura, Ross & Ross
The Bobo doll study
Method - an experiment
• Three conditions
• 24 children in each condition
10. Bandura, Ross & Ross
The Bobo doll study
First IV
• Non aggressive condition
• Aggressive condition
• Control condition
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The Bobo doll study
Second IV
• Children observed either a
• Male or Female role model
• 12 children in each
12. Bandura, Ross & Ross
The Bobo doll study
Third IV
• Gender of the child
• Child was male or female
13. 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
14. 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
15. 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
16. 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
17. 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)
18. Bandura, Ross & Ross
The Bobo doll study
• What happened then?
• Phase one of the experiment
• Children taken one at a time
• Modelling the behaviour phase
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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
20. 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
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The Bobo doll study
• What was observed?
• The criteria
• Imitative aggression
• Non-imitative aggression
– both physical & verbal
– e.g. hitting Bobo with mallet
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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
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The Bobo doll study
• Examples of behaviour observed
24. 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
25. 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
26. 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
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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
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The Bobo doll study
Gender Results
• Boys imitated more physical aggression (but not
verbal)
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The Bobo doll study
Gender Results
• Boys more aggressive after watching male
aggressive model
• Girls more aggressive after watching female
aggressive model
30. Bandura, Ross & Ross
The Bobo doll study
The Conclusion
• Learning can take place by observation
• Children more likely to learn from same sex
models
31. 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?
32. Bandura, Ross & Ross
The Bobo doll study
• Consider: BPS guidelines – Was this study
ethical?
• What are the issues?
• If not ethical, why not?
33. Bandura, Ross & Ross
The Bobo doll study
• Methodology
• Does this study have ecological validity?
• If not ecologically valid - why not?
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The Bobo doll study
• The participants
• To whom can we generalise the findings?
35. 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?
36. Bandura, Ross & Ross
The Bobo doll study
• There were four predictions (hypotheses) in this
• Matched subjects experiment
• What were they?
37. Bandura, Ross & Ross
The Bobo doll study
• Now complete your assignment on Bandura,
Ross and Ross
