Developmental Study - Bandura Flashcards
What was the year of publishing?
1961
What was the background or context of the study?
- Behaviourist suggests that all behaviours can be explained in terms of learning from the environment
- Concept of social learning theory = behaviourist perspective
What was the aim of the 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 long present.
What was hypothesis 1?
“Subjects exposed to aggressive models would reproduce aggressive acts resembling those of their models”
What was hypothesis 2?
“Observation of non aggressive models would have a generalised inhibiting effect on the subjects’ subsequent behaviour”
What was hypothesis 3?
Subjects would “imitate the behaviour of a same sex model to a greater degree than a model of the different sex”
What was hypothesis 4?
“Boys should be more pre-disposed than girls toward imitating aggressive”
What was the research method?
Lab Experiment - IV and DV, controlled environment,
What was the sample?
72 children from Stanford University Nursery, aged 37-69 months (3-5 years), mean age was 52 months, equal gender split
What was the sampling method?
Opportunity - Bandura only got consent from the teacher and not the parents
What were the four scales in the pre-testing stage?
Physical aggression, verbal aggression, aggression towards inanimate objects, aggression inhibition
What was the correlation co-efficient of the pre-testing?
0.89
What was the experimental design?
Matched participant
What were the IVs?
Aggressive/Non-aggressive model, male or female model, male or female child
What was the DV?
Imitating behaviour of model
What were the model conditions?
Aggressive male model, aggressive female model, non aggressive male model, non aggressive female model, no model
What happened in Stage 1?
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
What happened in Stage 2?
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
What happened in Stage 3?
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
What were the controls?
The timings in each room, the toys in each room, model behaviour, the categories in testing, experimenter behaviour, individually tested, rating during pre-testing
What were the 3 observation categories?
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
What type of observation was this?
Time sampling - record was taken every 5 seconds in this case
What are the qualitative findings?
“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
What were the conclusions?
Children do imitate models, more likely to imitate the same gender model, observing behaviour produces imitative behaviour
Could the findings apply elsewhere?
America has high levels of gun ownership and crime - are the children studied just imitating as a result of their cultural norms?
Criticisms in relations to ethics?
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
Ethics that were upheld?
Consent- from teacher and confidentiality- of the children
Internal Reliability - Was the procedure standardised and replicable?
- Repeated with 72 children
- Lots of controls
- Yes
Inter-rater Reliability - To what extent did the protesting raters agree with each other?
- High level of correlation in pre-testing (r=0.89)
Inter-rater Reliability - How was the reliability of the observational dad from stage 3 of the experiment checked?
2 observers used for half the participants in stage 3
External Reliability - Was the sample large enough to suggest a consistent effect?
- Only 6 children in each condition
- Very specific sample (wealthy Americans)
Internal (construct) Validity - Was in an accurate test of learning of behaviour through imitation?
- Controlled environment to reduce effects of extraneous variables
- Controlled model behaviour
- Matched participant design
External/ecological Validity - In what ways did/didn’t the experiment resemble a real-life situation?
- Children often watch adults demonstrate/play with toys
- Are children often left alone?
External (population) Validity - Can the sample be generalised from?
- American, wealthy children - bad
- Equal gender split - good
