bandura

Question 1

what was the predominant thought at the time about the effects on children of seeing adult behaviour

Answer 1

children would imitate behaviours shown by an adult model but that was restricted to children imitating while the adult was still present

Question 2

the general aim of banduras study

Answer 2

to see whether children would imitate adult behaviour when given the opportunity, even if they saw these behaviours in a different environment and the original model they observed performing the behaviour was no longer present.
specifically it was aggressive behaviour that bandura was interested in

Question 3

how many hypothesis were there

Answer 3

4

Question 4

hypothesis 1

Answer 4

1. ‘subjects exposed to aggressive models would reproduce aggressive acts, resembling those of their models’’

Question 5

hypothesis 2

Answer 5

‘observation of non-aggressive models would have generalised inhibiting effects on the subjects subsequent behaviour

Question 6

hypothesis 3

Answer 6

subjects would imitate the behaviour of a same sex model to a greater degree than a model of the opposite sex

Question 7

hypothesis 4

Answer 7

boys should be more pre-disposed than girls towards imitating aggression

Question 8

sample

Answer 8

• 72 children enrolled at Stanford university
• ranged in age from 37-69 months
• their mean age was 54 months
• there was an equal number of boys and girls.
• bandoras sample of children will immediately raise concerns of representativeness, the fact that young children imitate adults does not tell s anything about how likely adults are to initiate behaviour (if you consider all the adults who watch violent films or who play violent games, if behaviour was learned simply through observation and reinforcement then there would be a lot more violence in society).
• the young children may simply have been doing what adults do in a new situation. they had not seen a bobo doll before and when given something unfamiliar, then they just copied.
• bandoras technique of using a restricted sample also limits some of the generalisability of the results. the parents who used the Stanford uni nursery probably had similar characteristics such as socio-economic status, and therefore the children were listed in their representativeness of all children

Question 9

sampling method

Answer 9

opportunity sample

Question 10

experimental design

Answer 10

• bandura set up groups of children to experience different conditions
• no children experienced more than one condition
• MATCHED PARTICIPANT DESIGGN
  bandura matched each of the eight experimental groups of 6 children on their mean age, gender split and mean aggression rating
• the remaining 24 children were in a control group which didn’t experience any role model behaviour.

Question 11

how did bandura obtain the aggression rating

Answer 11

by having 2 observers (the teacher and the experimenter) observe each child in their social interactions at the nursery

Question 12

what was the 5 point rating scale

Answer 12

• physical aggression
• verbal aggression
• aggression towards inanimate objects
• aggression inhibition (the tendency not to show aggression when provoked)

Question 13

how was the 5 point rating scale used

Answer 13

• each child was given an overall rating scale and children were then put into groups of 3 with the same aggression rating.
• they were then randomly allocated with one child from each group of 3 put into the aggressive role model, one into the non-aggressive role model, and one into the control group

Question 14

how was the validity ensured

Answer 14

• inter-rater reliability: two observers scores for 51 of the children were correlated and found to have a correlation co-efficient of 0.89 to check the inter-rater reliability

Question 15

stage 1 of the experimental condition and procedure

Answer 15

• each child in the experimental condition was taken individually to a room and the model was invited in to join the game.
• the child was taken to a table and shown high-interest activities such as potato printing, stickers
• the model then sat at another table with tinker toys (small construction toys with figures, cars), a bobo doll and a mallet
• in the NON-AGGRESSIVE condition, the model began playing with tinker toys but then after 1 minute turned to the bobo doll and IGNORED the bobo doll
• in the AGGRESSIVE condition, the model began playing with tinker toys, but then after 1 minute turned to the bobo doll and was aggressive towards it for the rest of the time.
• the total time in that room was 10 minutes

Question 16

aggression arousal

Answer 16

• previous research had shown that witnessing aggression tends to reduce immediate aggression and so it was decided that all subjects (experimental and control) would be aroused so that any aggression learned from the model would be shown.
  if even in the light of this arousal, the children in the non-aggressive condition still didn’t show aggression the research could confirm the inhibitory influence of the non-aggressive model.
• cathartic exercise

Question 17

stage 2 of the experiment

Answer 17

• to achieve this arousal, the children were taken to a smaller room by the experimenter
• in this room were some attractive toys: a toy fire engine, jet plane, a cable car, a spinning top and a doll set with doll, clothes, pram and a cot
• the child was told he or she could play with these toys but once the child had settled in to playing (2 minutes), the experimenter told the chid that these were her very best toys, and not just anyone could play with them, and she had decided to keep them for the other children.
• however, there were some other toys in another room the child could play with

Question 18

test for delayed imitation: stage 3

Answer 18

• in the 3rd room was a range of toys, always set up in the same place for each child.
• these included all the toys in the first room: a bobo doll (smaller than the one the adult had), plus some other AGGRESSIVE toys for example 2 dart guns, a ball hanging from the ceiling.
• the NON-AGGRESSIVE toys induced a tea set, crayons, cars, trucks, and farm animals
• for 20 minutes the chid was allowed to play in this room while being observed through a one way mirror
• a time point sample was used where every 5 seconds a note was made of the behaviour shown on one of the behavioural categories

Question 19

measures of imitation

Answer 19

• imitation of physical aggression
  -imitation of verbal aggression
• measures of partial imitation
• non-imitative aggression
• non-aggressive measures

Question 19

imitation of physical aggression

Answer 19

hitting bobo with a mallet, kicking bobo

Question 19

imitation of verbal aggression

Answer 19

• repeating phrases such as ‘sock him’, ‘hit him down’
• imitative of non-aggressive verbal: repeating “he keeps on coming back for more”, “he sure is a tough fella”

Question 20

measures of partial imitation

Answer 20

• mallet aggression: hitting other objects with mallet
• sitting on bobo but not hitting bobo

Question 21

non-imitative aggression

Answer 21

• non-imitative verbal and physical aggression: e.g. aggressive acts directed at other objects and hostile remarks such as ‘shoot the bobo’ which the model hadnt said
• aggressive gun play: shooting or aiming the gun in the room which the model hadn’t done

Question 22

non-aggressive measures

Answer 22

non-aggressive measures: sitting quietly, playing non-aggressively, not playing at all

Question 23

advantages of using matched participants

Answer 23

we can stop prior levels of aggression influencing the results

Question 24

disadvantages of using matched participants

Answer 24

time consuming, a lot of effort
sometimes not possible to find everyone a match

Question 25

independent variables

Answer 25

• model behaviour
• sex of model
• sex of child

Question 26

different types of model conditions

Answer 26

• aggressive male model
• aggressive female model
• non-aggressive male model
• non-aggressive female model
• no model

Question 27

quanitative findings for boys

Answer 27

mean number of imitative physical aggressive acts:
- aggressive male model 25.8
- control: 2.0

Question 28

quanitative findings for girls

Answer 28

mean number of imitative verbal aggressive acts:
- aggressive female model: 13.7
- control: 0.7

Question 29

quantitative findings

Answer 29

• children who saw an aggressive model were more likely to show aggression: boys watching an aggressive male model gave a mean number of 25.8 physical aggressive acts whereas boys who watched a male non-aggressive model only showed a mean of 1.5 physical aggressive acts
• children who saw a non-aggressive model were more likely to be non-aggressive: boys watching a male non-aggressive act showed a mean of 1.5 physical aggressive acts whereas boys who saw a control model showed a mean of 2 physical aggressive acts
• children were more likely to imitate a model of the same sex: boys who saw an aggressive male model showed a mean of 25.8 physical aggressive acts, while when it was an aggressive female model, they showed a mean of only 12.4 physical aggressive acts
• boys were generally more aggressive than girls: boys showed on average 28.3 imitative physical acts and girls only showed 12.7 physical acts

Question 30

qualitative findings

Answer 30

-“ tha aint no way for a lady to behave”
- “the girls was just acting like a man”
-“ hes a good fighter like daddy”

Question 31

conclusions

Answer 31

• this study supported the claim that simply observing behaviour would produce imitative behaviour which would not be expected if that behaviour had not been observed.
• this moved on from skinners view that behaviour would only be shown if it was rewarded.
• there were no rewards for the children in this study

Question 32

research method

Answer 32

• this study used a laboratory experiment method as it had independent variables, dependent variables and controls.
• it also is an example of a controlled experiment. this control enhanced the validity of the stuff by controlling extraneous variables; for example putting the toys being set out in the same order for every child meant that the child wouldn’t confound the results by playing with the first toy he or she saw in the room. however, the set up was not really natural for the child and so to some extent lacked ECOLOGICAL VALIDITY
• it used matched participant design as the children were matched on the basis of their prior levels of aggression- this would control participant variables and increase the validity of the research.

Question 33

data

Answer 33

• bandura collected both quantitative and qualitative data, and his analysis of the probability of the results being due to chance showed that there was a significant difference between many of the conditions,
• the probability of p < 0.09 in the comparison between control and non-aggressive conditions seems to be less of a significant difference, but this is because no child in either conditions saw the model hitting the bobo doll, so probably both groups showed very little of this behaviour rather than similar high levels of such behaviours
• the qualitative data compromised the quotes of things the children said which illustrated their reasons for some behaviour.

Question 34

ethics

Answer 34

• teachers would give consent in LOCO PARENTIS (in place of parents) and are expected to adopt the view of the parents in terms of what it is likely to be the consequences for the children.
• the parents of children attending Stanford university day nursery knew it was linked to the uni and the parents agreed to their children taking part in in research when they signed them up for it.
• the children were not aware of the right to withdraw and so they had no choice as to whether they took part.
• the nature of this research may be considered to harm the children. theft that the children saw an aggressive role model and then behaved in an inactive and non-imative aggressive way would suggest that their behaviour was changed
• it would be difficult to debrief young children as telling them not to be aggressive in the future is not going to work.
• the second stage of the experiment which is the mild aggression arousal stage, in which the children were told that they couldn’t play with the toys fir the ‘good children’, would be harmful ti a Childs self esteem and causing anxiety in such young children is considered unacceptable

Question 35

validity

Answer 35

• bandura worked in a controlled manner to ensure that there was little in the way of extraneous variables which would REDUCE THE VALIDTY of his research.
• by putting the toys in the same place in the observation room, the children would not have behaved differently if they went for the first toy they came across. the model also had a certain number of actions to be repeated an exact number of times, so that again the child wasn’t exposed to different aggressive acts.
• the pre-testing of the children (for their prior levels of aggression) and the way in which they were placed in different conditions on a matched basis meant that the results could not have been affected by all the ‘naturally’ aggressive children accidentally ending up in the same condition
• the highly stylised way in which the models aggressed against the bobo doll (hitting it in particular places, saying particular phrases) enabled bandura to know whether behaviour shown by the children in the third room had been learned during he experiment, or not, as some of these behaviours were so particular that they could only have been lensed during the experiment.
• however, whether the children were still behaving in the same ways several weeks, months or years after the experiment was not tested, so it is questionable how ‘long term’ the learning lasted

Question 36

reliability

Answer 36

• HIGH INTERNAL RELIABILITY: the procedure was highly replicable, as was shown by the fact that it was replicated with so many children during the experiment
• LOW EXTERNAL RELIABILITY: it is arguable that the sample was not large enough to establish reliable effects as there were only 6 children in each condition

Question 37

ethnocentrism

Answer 37

• the fact that the study was carried out in America (and presumably on American children) is also of relevance given that America is different from many other countries in its high levels of gun ownership.
• this may have affected the likelihood of the children learning aggressive behaviour. so the research is ethnocentric if we assume the same imitative nature of learning behaviour happens in every culture as it does in America
• perhaps the influence of culture is really what makes this study ethnocentric, for example not imitating a female model being aggressive, but if the implication is that whatever the cultural norms are they will always influence a child, then this is not ethnocentric

Question 38

how does bandura link to the nature/nurture debate

Answer 38

• banduras study might be seen as a clear indication of the nurture side of this debate as the influence of the environment can be seen quite obviously in all of the hypotheses.
• it could link to the nature side, a biological area explanation would be the presence of testosterone in boys which from when they were in the womb is a higher exposure than girls. and research has linked high levels of testosterone to higher levels of aggression in humans and animals.
• society could have unwittingly shown acceptance of aggression in boys due to the facts that the qualitative data gained such as ‘the aint no way for a lady to behave’ would indicate that this may be the case. nurture
• research shows that parents reinforce stereotypical behaviour, playing with a by who picks uo a tractor and not paying with a by who picked up a doll. also the words parents use when talking to babies: strong masculine words of big boy, strong little man, compared with beautiful little girls, can from the first interactions mould a child to fit in with society’s stereotypical view.
• this is more of an evidence for the nurture side of the debate.

Question 39

how does bandoras study link to the free will/determinism debate

Answer 39

• data shows that physical aggression shown by female role models was not imitated to the extent that aggression shown by male role models was.
• this indicated some choices being made by children as to what was an acceptable way to behave.
• verbal aggression (more acceptable when the model was the same sex as the child) was imitated more by the children. this cognitive aspect of the children’s behaviour, thinking about what they should or shouldn’t do would indicate that humans ave some free will, even in what seems t be an enivornmentally deterministic situation.

Question 40

how does banduras study link to usefulness

Answer 40

• many later studies supported bandoras findings on learning through observation and imitation and eventually society took note of the impact television and films could have on impressionable young people.
• 9pm watershed where tv divides between programmed that are suitable for children and programmes that are unsuitable
• social learning theory is used a lot in society. role models for example are often CASTIGATED (complained about) for displaying behaviour which we dont want children to imitate,