SEE AGGRESSION

DO AGGRESSION
1961 Study by Albert Bandura and
Dorothea Ross
 A TOUCH OF HISTORY
Aggression in children can be seen as
many things.
Early in the 60s Psychologists Albert
Bandura and Dorothea Ross wanted to
discover if it was related to observation.
Do children learn how to act aggressive?
 ABOUT THE
PSYCHOLOGIST
S
Doing their research at Stanford University,
Bandura and his associates pioneered Social
Learning Theory.

Running off their success they then wanted to

test their findings, that as humans we gather
information from experience and observation.
 BUILD UP TO THE
EXPERIMENT
In order to simulate how the children
would react, the psychologists wanted
both aggressive and non-aggressive
groups.

They then wanted to put children into

different situations to see how they would
react to the adults actions.
 4 PROPOSED SITUATIONS
1.Children observing aggressive adults would
be aggressive, even after the adult had left.
2.Children exposed to non-aggressive
behaviors would be less likely to be
aggressive
3.How same-sex interaction could be used to
influence the children.
4.Boys should be more aggressive than girls
due to aggression being a masculine
behavior.
 PARTICIPANTS
Due to the resources Bandura had he
went to the Stanford Nursery School to
gather students
They chose to study children between
the ages of 3 and 6
36 girls and 36 boys participated in the
experiment
 METHOD & CONDITIONS
Formed 8 experimental groups (48), 1
control group (24)
The 8 groups were divided based on sex
along with aggressive vs non-aggressive
models to observe
What if they were already really aggressive?
 THE EXPERIMENT
Each child was exposed individually and
had an adult to play a game with
Adults were told to begin playing with
tinker toys: after a minute for the
aggressive conditions they had to be
violent toward a Bobo Doll physically and
with speech
The aggressive conditions were all
identical
 EXPERIMENT FINDINGS
Children exposed to violent behaviors
tended to imitate the adults: 38.2 instances
for males watching males, 12.7 for girls
On average the boys were 3x more likely to
be physically aggressive than the girls.
Boys and girls scored similarly in terms of
verbal aggression
 RESULT CONCLUSIONS
Banduras theory of social learning was a
success
This may be one of the most influential
reasons behind behavior and learning
Children were more likely to repeat
aggressive behaviors after watching an
adult perform them.
 LATER RESEARCH:
Over 56 years later their research
continues to have an influence.
TV violence and video games research in
recent years is debatable.
Bandura also later found that if aggressive
behavior was reinforced, than It could
continue, but if the model was punished
then the child didnt behave aggressively.
 CONCLUSION
It is impossible to prevent this type of
aggressive behavior in children, maybe
now more than ever before.
It is more on the foundation of morals
and principals that children will not act
out in profound ways.
.
THANK YOU