Social Learning Theory Flashcards
Recall who developed Social Learning Theory
Albert Bandura in 1977.
List Bandura’s three experiments
1961 - aggression vs non-aggression
1963 - real life vs film aggression
1965 - aggression is rewarded (vicarious reinforcement)
Recall the aim of Bandura’s classic 1961 study
AIM: To see whether aggressive behaviour could be acquired through observation of aggressive models
Describe the procedure of the Bandura’s classic 1961 study
MODELLING STAGE - STAGE ONE - APPROXIMATELY 10 MINS
The experimenter led the participant into the first room, where the child was
seated at the table. The model was then escorted to the opposite corner of the room and told that the Tinker toy set, mallet, and Bobo doll were for him or her to play with. The experimenter then left the room.
AGGRESSIVE CONDITION - the model started to play with the Tinkertoy set, but after a minute turned to the Bobo doll and started to act aggressively towards it. The aggressive acts were
deliberately stylised so that imitation of them would be clear and not just examples of how children would play with the Bobo doll. The physically aggressive acts were repeated about
three times in a ten-minute period.
The physically aggressive acts were:
-Laid the Bobo doll on its side, sat on it and punched it on the nose
-Raised the Bobo doll up and hit it on the head with the mallet
-Threw the Bobo doll in the air and kicked it around the room.
The verbally aggressive responses were:
•Sock it to him
•Hit him down
• Pow
• Kick him
The non-aggressive phrases were:
‘He keeps coming back or more*
‘He sure is a tough fella’.
NON- AGGRESSIVE CONDITION -the procedure was the same except that, once seated at the table, the adult assembled the Tinker toys in a quiet, subdued manner and ignored the Bobo doll for the ten minutes that the child was in the room. After ten minutes the experimenter came
to collect the child, saying they were going to another room.
MILD AGGRESSION AROUSAL - STAGE TWO - APPROXIMATLEY TWO MINUTES
Each child including those from the control was then taken into room two. where they were subjected to mild aggression arousal. This room was filled with attractive toys; a jet fighter plane, a cable car, a colourful spinning top, and a doll set complete with wardrobe, doll carriage, and baby crib. The child was allowed to play with them for two minutes. Then the experimenter stopped the child and said: “ these are my very best toys! I don’t just let anyone play with them! I’ve decided to keep them for the other children. But you can play with the toys in the other room”
TEST FOR DELAYED IMITATION - STAGE THREE - APPROXIMATELY 20 MINUTES
Each child, including those from the control group, was taken into room three. This room contained a variety of aggressive toys: a 3-foot bobo doll, a mallet, a peg board, two dart guns and a tether ball with a face painted on it which hung from the ceiling. The non-aggressive toys included a tea set, crayons, colouring set, two dolls, three bears, cars and trucks.
The experimenter stayed with them, as some of the children refused to go into this room on their own or tried to leave before the allotted time. To avoid affecting the children’s behaviour the experimenter worked discreetly at the other end of the room. The child was able to play with the toys and their behaviour was observed for 20 minutes through the one-way mirror.
Two observers scored the subjects behaviour at five second intervals, which gave 240 observations. The children were observed for the following categorjes of behaviour:
• imitative aggression (Physical and verbal)
• partial imitation
•non- imitative aggression
Recall the results of the 1961 classic study
1) Participants in the aggressive condition showed more aggressive behaviour than those in the non-aggressive or control condition.
2) The participants in the non-aggressive condition showed no significant difference in aggressive behaviour to the control group who saw no model.
3) The sex of the model impacted on the participants, children would be more likely to copy a same- sex model than the opposite sex.
4) Boys in particular imitated more
aggressive acts than girls, especially with the same-sex model.
Evaluate the generalisability of Bandura’s 1961 study
X The sample may be biased as the participants are not representative of a
target population of children in general.
The children were all from Stanford University nursery. The majority of these children are likely to have been sons/daughters of university academics and so all children are from a middle-class white background.
X Furthermore, the children were all between 3 and 5 years old. Therefore, it could be that this causes cultural bias in the study and lowers the generalisability of the results of this study to a wider population of children.
Evaluate the reliability of Bandura’s 1961 study
•The study is regarded to have a high level of reliability as standardised procedures were used for each child making the research easily replicable.
For example, in the aggression arousal stage, the children had exactly the same toys to play with!(model aeroplane, spinning top) and exactly the same phrase was said to all of them: ‘These are
my very best toys!’
•Furthermore, the results of the two observers used to record
the behaviour in the test for delayed imitation were checked for reliability - high inter-rater reliability (0.9; very strong positive correlation) was found.
Evaluate the applications of Bandura’s 1961 study
X This study could be said to have limited real-world applications since it was completed in laboratory setting and therefore the study is said to lack ecological validity. This artificial environment may have made the behaviour seen in the children less natural. For example, the bobo doll was an unusual object to the children and the three rooms were all very controlled settings with the same toys and the same events and may not have been a realistic reflection of the children’s natural environment. This in turn has an implication on how useful these research findings are in terms of demonstrating children’s responses to seeing someone behaving aggressively.
✅Nevertheless, the study provoked a great deal of debate on the effects of television on children’s behaviour and aided in the development of policies that effectively censor what children can watch e.g., the 9pm watershed on TV and the certification of movies.
Evaluate the validity of Bandura’s 1961 study
✅Bandura’s research has some internal validity as it was carried out in a laboratory setting and had several controls to ensure that extraneous variables did not influence the children’s behaviour. For example, the children’s aggression levels prior to the experiment were controlled by the Ps being matched with a child that had a similar aggression rating. They were then randomly allocated to the three conditions to ensure that any aggressive behaviour seen was not the result of pre-existing aggression in the children. This control and others enabled Bandura to make cause and effect links between the aggression of the models and the behaviour of the children since the main variables were isolated through the controls- thus giving the research findings a high level of validity.
X However, it has been argued that the bobo doll itself threatens the internal validity of this study. This is because it could be that the children believed that they were expected to hit the bobo doll and that the adult model was giving them instructions as to what was expected. These demand characteristics may mean that the behaviour differences seen in the children may not be because of observational learning and therefore validity is lowered.
Evaluate the ethics of Bandura’s 1961 study
There are some ethical issues raised by Bandura’s study for not ensuring full ethical consideration for the participants.
X For example, in the study it is not clear how consent was granted for the children to participate in the study and whether the parents knew exactly what would happen to their children.
X It has also been said that the participants were not protected from harm as they were trained to be aggressive and it was not known how long the effects of the study would last (the children were never followed up). In addition, in the second stage of the study - aggression arousal - many of the children became upset when they were not allowed to play with the toys.
What is the name of the university where Bandura carried out his experiments?
Stanford
Bandura’s experiments were completed throughout the 1960’s; identify two cultural or societal
changes that were occurring at this time which coincided with the growth in studying social psychology.
1960s strong societal changes were afoot - the civil rights movement
pocured, the president was shot (Kennedy) and there was a sense of
evelt against norma-social norms;
Explain how this Bandura (1961) was regarded to be a matched pairs design
Participants were matched upon their
aggression levels. These levels were identified by a female experimenter and the children’s nursery school teacher, both of whom knew the children well prior to the study. The children were rated on a five-point aggression scale for displays for physical or verbal aggression towards objects and their ability to control their behaviour.
Recall the aim of Bandura’s 1963 study
To test the hypothesis whether the exposure of children to film mediated aggressive models would increase the probability of aggressive behaviour.
Describe the procedure of the Bandura’s 1963 study
REAL LIFE AGGRESSION CONDITION- The experimenter led the participant into the first room, where the child was
seated at the table. The model was then escorted to the opposite corner of the room and told that the Tinker toy set, mallet, and Bobo doll were for him or her to play with. The experimenter then left the room.
HUMAN FILM AGGRESSION CONDITION- The experimenter led the participant into a semi-darkened
room and introduced them into the picture materials and informed that while they played with potato prints, a movie would be shown on a screen, positioned approximately 6 feet away from the subject’s table. The colour movie and tape recording of the soundtrack was begun by a male projectionist. The film was shown for 10 minutes. The models in the film were the same adult males and females who participated in the real-life condition of the experiment.
CARTOON FILM AGGRESSION - The experimenters sat the participants at the table with the picture construction material, the experimenter walked over to the television console which was 3 feet awain front of the participants table and remarked, “I’ll guess I’ll turn on the colour TV”,
and turned the cartoon on. The experimenter then left the room. The cartoon was performed by a female model costumed as a black cat similar to the many cartoon cats. The cartoon began with a close up of a stage in which the curtains were slowly drawn revealing a picture of a cartoon cat along with the title, Herman The Cat
The film then showed the cat pommelling the on the head with a mallet. The cat’s verbal aggression was repeated in a high- pitched voice.
TEST FOR DELAYED IMITATION - STAGE THREE - APPROXIMATLEY 20 MINUTES
Each child, including those from the control group was taken into room three. This room contained a variety of aggressive toys: a 3-foot bobo doll, a mallet, a peg board, two dart guns and a tether ball with a face painted on it which hung from the ceiling. The non-aggressive toys included a tea set, crayons, colouring set, two dolls, three bears, cars and trucks.
The experimenter stayed with them, as some of the children refused to go into this room on their own or tried to leave before the allotted time. To avoid affecting the children’s behaviour the experimenter worked discreetly at the other end of the room. The child was able to play with the toys and their behaviour was observed for 20 minutes through the one-way mirror.
Two observers scored the subjects behaviour at five second intervals, which gave 240 observations.
List some of the standardised procedures used in the 1963 study.
Inter-rater reliability as two observers Every experiment followed same routine Timings of the rooms Desk measurements Same toys
Recall the results of the 1963 study
The results indicated that exposure to filmed aggression appears to heighten aggressive reactions in children. Participants who viewed the aggressive and cartoon models on film exhibited nearly twice as much aggression than did subjects in the control group who were not exposed to the aggressive film content.
What did Bandura conclude from his 1963 study?
- From the results Bandura concluded that observing filmed aggressive acts will lead to aggression acts in children. It was not just that watching aggression led to aggression it was that actual observed behaviour was reproduced.
- This study also made indications that learning was vicarious (Vicarious Learning is learning that is derived from indirect sources such as hearing or observation, rather than direct, hands-on, instruction) as the model exhibiting the behaviour was not punished. The model might not have been directly rewarded either but if the behaviour seemed acceptable to the child, they may have imitated the behaviour because they thought it was fine to do so.
Evaluate the validity of Bandura’s 1963 study
Bandura’s research was carried out in a laboratory setting and had a number of controls. In this experiment there was even a control group of participants. This was used to provide Bandura with a baseline measurement to which he could compare the effect of the three conditions. This control and others enabled Bandura to measure the difference between the conditions and meant that a cause and effect link could be established: thus the study had a high level of VALIDITY. This in turn means that this piece of research is regarded to be scientific and provides psychology as a discipline with credibility within the wider scientific community.
Evaluate the reliability of Bandura’s 1963 study
Another strength with this research was the RELIABILITY of the measurements that were carried out by the two observers to record the behaviour in the test for delayed imitation. The two observers were trained to a reliable standard. Also, one of these judges was blind to the condition to which the child had been placed and this was used to avoid bias when recording the behaviour. By doing this Bandura was ensuring inter-rater reliability throughout this experiment.
Evaluate the application/ ecological validity of Bandura’s 1963 study
there were shortcomings with this research. This study could be said to have limited application since it was completed in a laboratory setting with the children seeing reinforced
behaviour through an enactment of aggression on a Bobo doll, or a video of this re-enactment or a cartoon of an aggressive cat. None of the reinforced behaviour was carried out by parents which children would have been more familiar with. Therefore. the research can be said to lack ecological validity.
•Low ecological validity has implications for how applicable these research findings are to a child’s natural responses to seeing someone they know being aggressive.
