DEVELOPMENTAL-Bandura Flashcards
What was the predominate thought at the time about the effects of children seeing adult behaviour?
-Children will imitate behaviour only when the adult is present
-Watching aggressive behaviour will lower a persons aggressive drive through a process called catharsis.
What are the four hypotheses of Bandura’s study?
-Num 1: Subjects exposed to aggressive behaviour would reproduce that behaviour
-Num 2: Observing non aggressive models would inhibit the effect of subjects subsequent behaviour
-Num 3: Subjects would imitate more behaviour from a same sex model rather than opposite sex
-Num 4: Boys should be more predisposed than girls when imitating aggression
What was the sample like?
36 boys, 36 girls
37-69 months old
All from the stanford university nursery
What sampling method was used?
Opportunity Sampling
What experimental design was used?
Matched pairs, as participants were pre matched on aggression levels
What were the children matched on?
-Mean age
-gender split
-aggression rating
How did the researchers measure prior levels of aggression?
They observed each children in their social interactions at the nursery.
How were the children allocated to each condition?
Randomly, with one of each aggression category in each group of 3
What is the advantage of using matched participants here?
Participant variables are controlled, so any differences in aggression was due to the model
What are the disadvantages of using matched pairs?
Time consuming, difficult, requires more participants
What were the independent variables in the study?
-Behaviour of the model, gender of the model, gender of the child
What were the five types of model?
-Aggressive male
-non aggressive male
-aggressive female
-non aggressive female
-no model
What was stage 1 like?
Each child was taken individually to a room, with a table that has toys on it, such as potato printing and stickers. An adult then sat at another table with a bobo doll, tinker toys and a mallet.
(aggressive and non aggressive condition)
Aggressive Condition:
The model played with the tinker toys for 1 minute, and then kicked, hit, was verbally aggressive and gave non aggressive comments
Non aggressive condition:
The model played with the tinker toys and ignored the bobo doll
Control:
There was no exposure to adult models
What was stage 2 like?
The child was taken to another room, with various toys, and were told they could play with them. After two minutes, the child was told the toy weren’t theirs and were removed from them
What was stage 3 like?
Making use of time sampling, the children were observed one by one through a one way mirror.A record was made every 5 seconds.
The recorded behaviours were:
-Imitative behaviour of physical or verbal aggression,
-Partial imitative behaviour of aggression,
-Novel aggressive behaviour
Researchers results were compared. Interobserver reliability of 0.89
What were the quantitative findings?
What were the qualitative findings?
“That girl was just acting like a man”
“He’s a good fighter like daddy”
What were the conclusions made?
-Children imitate behaviour of the adults, but more specifically the same gender
-Children will imitate both aggressive and non aggressive behaviours
What were the ethics like?
-Informed consent was gathered from the nursery teachers
-Potential lasting aggressive behaviours, lacks protection from harm
What is the evaluation of it being a lab experiment?
-Highly controlled, so lack of extraneous variables and so high construct validity
-May lack ecological validity because the task is so unnatural
What are the strengths of having a control group?
It provides a baseline to compare behaviour
What are the limits of the sample?
There was a limited age range, so it may be difficult to generalise findings
