Developmental Study - Bandura

Question 1

What was the year of publishing?

Answer 1

1961

Question 2

What was the background or context of the study?

Answer 2

• Behaviourist suggests that all behaviours can be explained in terms of learning from the environment
• Concept of social learning theory = behaviourist perspective

Question 3

What was the aim of the study?

Answer 3

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 long present.

Question 4

What was hypothesis 1?

Answer 4

“Subjects exposed to aggressive models would reproduce aggressive acts resembling those of their models”

Question 5

What was hypothesis 2?

Answer 5

“Observation of non aggressive models would have a generalised inhibiting effect on the subjects’ subsequent behaviour”

Question 6

What was hypothesis 3?

Answer 6

Subjects would “imitate the behaviour of a same sex model to a greater degree than a model of the different sex”

Question 7

What was hypothesis 4?

Answer 7

“Boys should be more pre-disposed than girls toward imitating aggressive”

Question 8

What was the research method?

Answer 8

Lab Experiment - IV and DV, controlled environment,

Question 9

What was the sample?

Answer 9

72 children from Stanford University Nursery, aged 37-69 months (3-5 years), mean age was 52 months, equal gender split

Question 10

What was the sampling method?

Answer 10

Opportunity - Bandura only got consent from the teacher and not the parents

Question 11

What were the four scales in the pre-testing stage?

Answer 11

Physical aggression, verbal aggression, aggression towards inanimate objects, aggression inhibition

Question 12

What was the correlation co-efficient of the pre-testing?

Answer 12

0.89

Question 13

What was the experimental design?

Answer 13

Matched participant

Question 14

What were the IVs?

Answer 14

Aggressive/Non-aggressive model, male or female model, male or female child

Question 15

What was the DV?

Answer 15

Imitating behaviour of model

Question 16

What were the model conditions?

Answer 16

Aggressive male model, aggressive female model, non aggressive male model, non aggressive female model, no model

Question 17

What happened in Stage 1?

Answer 17

Children were individually shown into a room with toys for 10 minutes - model then came, played for 1 minute and then in the aggressive condition the model starts portraying aggressive behaviour

Question 18

What happened in Stage 2?

Answer 18

Mild Aggression Arousal - Children were taking into a room filled with attractive toys. They could play in this room for 2 minutes and then the experimenter said that the toys are for other children but they can play with the other toys in the other room

Question 19

What happened in Stage 3?

Answer 19

This room included all toys from stage 1 with bobo doll as well as aggressive toys - watched through a one way mirror - 20 minutes - every 5 seconds a note was made on their behaviour based upon categories

Question 20

What were the controls?

Answer 20

The timings in each room, the toys in each room, model behaviour, the categories in testing, experimenter behaviour, individually tested, rating during pre-testing

Question 21

What were the 3 observation categories?

Answer 21

Imitative behaviour - physical, verbal and non-aggressive
Partial imitative behaviour - mallet aggression, sits on bobo doll
Non-imitative aggressive behaviour - punched bobo doll, non-imitative physical and verbal aggression, aggressive gun play

Question 22

What type of observation was this?

Answer 22

Time sampling - record was taken every 5 seconds in this case

Question 23

What are the qualitative findings?

Answer 23

“That ain’t no way for a lady to behave”, “He’s a good fighter like daddy”, “that girl was just acting like a man” - men are seen as heroes so are physical towards bads people

Question 24

What were the conclusions?

Answer 24

Children do imitate models, more likely to imitate the same gender model, observing behaviour produces imitative behaviour

Question 25

Could the findings apply elsewhere?

Answer 25

America has high levels of gun ownership and crime - are the children studied just imitating as a result of their cultural norms?

Question 26

Criticisms in relations to ethics?

Answer 26

Consent- didn’t ask children or parents, protection from harm- could get hurt in the process - change children’s behaviour, no right to withdraw- wouldn’t understand, debriefing- would that help? would they understand?, deceived- thought they were simply playing, thought model was real, didn’t know they were being watched

Question 27

Ethics that were upheld?

Answer 27

Consent- from teacher and confidentiality- of the children

Question 28

Internal Reliability - Was the procedure standardised and replicable?

Answer 28

• Repeated with 72 children
• Lots of controls
• Yes

Question 29

Inter-rater Reliability - To what extent did the protesting raters agree with each other?

Answer 29

• High level of correlation in pre-testing (r=0.89)

Question 30

Inter-rater Reliability - How was the reliability of the observational dad from stage 3 of the experiment checked?

Answer 30

2 observers used for half the participants in stage 3

Question 31

External Reliability - Was the sample large enough to suggest a consistent effect?

Answer 31

• Only 6 children in each condition

- Very specific sample (wealthy Americans)

Question 32

Internal (construct) Validity - Was in an accurate test of learning of behaviour through imitation?

Answer 32

• Controlled environment to reduce effects of extraneous variables
• Controlled model behaviour
• Matched participant design

Question 33

External/ecological Validity - In what ways did/didn’t the experiment resemble a real-life situation?

Answer 33

• Children often watch adults demonstrate/play with toys

- Are children often left alone?

Question 34

External (population) Validity - Can the sample be generalised from?

Answer 34

• American, wealthy children - bad

- Equal gender split - good