Bandura's study Flashcards
What are the three aspects of behaviourist learning theory?
Classical conditioning
operant conditioning
social learning theory
What it classical conditioning?
Learning through association, e.g learning that the sound of a bell means food
What is Operant conditioning?
Learning as a result of consequence and reinforcement
Positive and negative reinforcement
What is social learning theory?
Learning behaviours through observation and imitation of people they watch (usually role models)
What was the aim of Bandura’s study?
to see whether children would imitate aggressive behaviour when given the opportunity, even if they saw these behaviours in a different environment and the original model they observed performing the aggressive act was no longer present.
What were the four hypotheses of Bandura’s study?
- subjects exposed to aggressive models would reproduce aggressive acts resembling those of their models
- Observation of non aggressive models would have a generalised inhibiting effect on the subject’s subsequent behaviours
- Subjects would imitate the behaviour of a same sex role model to a greater degree than a model of the opposite sex
- Boys should be more pre-disposed than girls toward imitating aggression
What research method was Bandura’s study?
A lab experiment
What was the sample in Bandura’s study?
72 children from Stanford nursery school aged 3-5 (average 52 months). 36 boys, 36 girls
Which sampling method was used in Bandura’s study?
random
How did Bandura control for inherited aggression?
By assessing the children for their prior levels of aggression and rating them on four different rating scales previous to the study.
What were the four different rating scales used to determine inherited aggression in bandura’s study?
Verbal aggression
aggression towards objects
aggression inhibition
physical aggression
Who observed the children in the pretesting? What was good about this?
The experimenter and a nursery school teacher. They had very high interobserver reliability, with a correlation co-efficient of 0.89
What was the experimental design of Bandura’s study?
Matched pairs
What were the IVs of Bandura’s study?
Gender of participant
gender of model
aggressive vs non-aggressive
What were the 5 model conditions in Bandura’s study?
control - none aggressive female aggressive male non-aggressive female non-aggressive male
What were the controls of Bandura’s study?
The script of the models and experimenter
The rooms were always set up the same
In Bandura’s study, why was it necessary for there to have a non-aggressive model condition?
To see if the children would imitate a different behaviour too.
In Bandura’s study, why was it necessary for the model to have very distinctive aggressive acts in the aggressive condition?
To clearly see whether the children are imitating the model.
Why was in necessary for each child to be studies individually in bandura’s study, rather than a group?
To ,make sure that the children weren’t just conforming to the grouo norms.
What conclusions were made from bandura’s study? (not to do with gender)
Aggressive behaviour can be transmitted through observation and imitation.
Seeing adults act in a certain way means that children think it is okay to act that way (becomes legitimised)
What conclusions can be drawn from Bandura’s study? (gender)
In western culture, boys and girls are socialised to act in a certain way. Girls are more comfortable with verbal aggression because physical aggression is ‘unladylike’. Boys see heroic characters acting aggressively in stories (gender stereotyping)
What were the qualitative findings of Bandura’s study?
They filmed all of the trials
took notes of what the children said. e.g “He’s a good fighter”, “who’s that lady, she’s not very ladylike”, “ Shoot the bobo”
They abserved for 20 minutes.
Describe the observation method in Bandura’s study
There were three observers; one experimenter in the room with the child, and two watching behind a one way mirror. It was a covert observation. They used a time sampling method, where they tallied what happened every 5 seconds.
What happened in stage 2 of Bandura’s study?
The children were taken to another room with ‘attractive’ toys, e.g doll with accessories, fire engine, jet fighter etc, they were allowed to play with them for 2 minutes before the experimenter said that those toys were for other children and they could no longer play with them.
