BANDURA (1961, 1963a, 1965)
THREE STUDIES INTO IMITATING AGGRESSION

This very famous study was the first of many carried out in the 1960s by Albert Bandura at Stanford University. By the 1960s, behaviourism seemed to have gone as far as it could go with its studies on rats and other animals, but it still didn’t offer a satisfactoty explanation of how complex behaviour like language was learned. Bandura started a new approach, incorporating some insights from Cognitive Psychology. What if, as well as learning from our own experiences, we learned from other people’s? Bandura began investigating the importance of role models and the process of imitation.

This study is significant for students in other ways:
  • It shows how scientific research proceeds, because Bandura went on to replicate his basic study many times, trying to see what changes to the role model would raise or lower imitation.
  • It illustrates features of Learning Theory, since it explores how people learn behaviour from their environment rather than have innate behaviours or dispositions
  • It illustrates the power of the observational and experimental methods, gathering quantitative and qualitative data about participants in a controlled situation
  • It ties in to your Key Question in Learning Theory, since it helps explain anorexia

IMITATING ROLE MODELS

Bandura decided to use young children as his sample, because they would regard any adult as a role model and would be prepared to engage in some quite extreme behaviour without self-restraint. He used children at the Nursery School on the Stamford University campus, mostly the children of older students or college staff.

Bandura followed the same basic procedure in all his studies. He used equal numbers of boys and girls and matched them on how aggressive they were. To do this he asked an experimenter and a nursery teacher to rate each child for aggression on a 5-point scale; groups were created so that there were similar ranges of aggression in each.
The Model Room:

In this room, the children played with finger paints and stickers. The experimental groups then observed an adult role model enter the room and interact with a 6’ tall Bobo Doll. The children observed a role model go through a pre-scripted routine; some role models attacked a “Bobo Doll” – an inflatable clown that bounced upright again when hit.

The Aggressive Model
  • pushed the doll over,
  • sat on it and punched it;
  • they would also hit the doll on the head with a plastic mallet
  • and say aggressive phrases like “Sock him on the nose!”

The Non-Aggressive Model played quietly alongside the children and ignored the Bobo Doll.

The Arousal Room:

The children were taken to another room with many toys and given a few minutes to play. Then an experimenter entered and told them these toys were for “other children”. This meant that the children were all in the same emotional state and all experienced frustration, making them likely to act on any aggression they felt.

The Observation Room:

The children were placed in a room for 20 minutes. There was a mixture of aggressive and non-aggressive toys, including a 3’ tall Bobo Doll, a plastic mallet and a gun that fired suckers.

A one-way mirror enabled two experimenters to observe the children and tally behaviours on a checklist: Bandura looked for physical and verbal aggression that imitated the role model, “mallet aggression”, “gun play” and non-imitative aggression, where the children invented their own aggressive actions or phrases. Observers recorded the child’s behaviour every 5 seconds.

  • It is important for you to know the procedure of this study in detail – including why each of the features were used: why was the role models behaviour pre-scripted? why were the children put in the arousal room? why were there two observers behind the one-way mirror? and so on.
  • This basic procedure is replicated in Bandura’s 1963 and 1965 Variations.

BANDURA, ROSS & ROSS (1961)
APRC

Aim:

To find out if children would show more aggressive behaviour if exposed to an aggressive role model and less aggressive behaviour if exposed to a non-aggressive role model. Also, to see if the sex of the role model and the child made a difference, specifically to see if the children were more likely to imitate a same sex role model and if boys were more aggressive than girls.

IV:

Bandura manipulated two sets of IVs: (1) whether the role model was aggressive or non-aggressive, (2) whether the role model was the same sex or opposite sex to the child; there was also (3) a Control condition where the children did not see a role model at all.

Bandura also studied a naturally-varying IV: (4) whether the child was male or female.

This makes the study both a lab experiment and a natural experiment. It has a Matched Pairs design because each child was only in one condition but they were matched on their level of starting aggression.

DV:

Bandura’s observers recorded the number of verbal, physical, mallet and gun-play aggressive actions the children carried out; they also counted the number of acts of non-imitative aggression.

Sample:

72 children, 36 boys and 36 girls, aged 3-5, recruited from Stanford University Nursery School.
Procedure:

The basic procedure is described above.

24 children (12 boys, 12 girls) formed a Control group who didn’t watch any role model. The other 48 children were split into experimental groups of 6, each group containing 3 boys and 3 girls.
Half the children saw a same-sex role model; half saw an opposite sex role model.

Results

The children who observed an aggressive role model showed a lot of verbal and physical aggression that resembled the scripted routine the model had acted out.

There was very little aggressive behaviour in the Non-Aggressive Model condition and in the Control condition; around 70% had a score of zero for aggression. Children from the Non-Aggressive Model condition spent the most time sitting quietly.

In general, a male role model had a bigger influence than a female role model: the aggressive male model produced more aggression; the non-aggressive male model produced more calm.
There’s a lot of quantitative data here, but students will only need to learn 2 or 3 examples.

Some of the more significant figures have been highlighted:
  • Compare the boys’ physical aggression after a male aggressive role model (average 25.8 acts) to the girls’ after a female aggressive role model (5.5)
  • Compare the girls’ verbal aggression after a female aggressive role model (13.7) to the boys after a male aggressive role model (12.7)
  • Mallet Aggression is high even for the Control group (about 13 acts on average, regardless of gender), but a non-aggressive role model reduces it to 0.5 for girls, 6.7 for boys
  • Even in the Control group, non-imitative aggression is higher for boys (24.6) than girls (6.1)

Conclusions

Bandura concludes that behaviour can be learned by imitation even if it hasn’t been reinforced (as Skinner suggested). In fact, complex patterns of behaviour can be learned through imitation without needing reinforcement for each part.
social imitation may hasten or short-cut the acquisition of new behaviours without the necessity of reinforcing successive approximations as suggested by Skinner - Albert Bandura
The male role model was much more influential than the female and boys’ showed a much greater tendency to engage in physical aggression. Bandura links this to cultural expectations. He suggests that even at a young age, boys and girls have learned what society expects them to behave like, based on TV, stories and family.

Verbal aggression was sex-typed, with girls imitating the female role model and boys imitating the male role model. This suggests that, if there are no strong cultural expectations, people will imitate the model they most identify with, even if the model is a stranger.

Aggressive models seem to weaken social inhibitions. You can see this by comparing the model conditions to the Control group who acted ‘naturally’. It is interesting to see how much Mallet Aggression and Gun Play went on in the Control group – presumably cultural expectations tell children they ought to play with mallets/guns in this way.

BANDURA, ROSS & ROSS (1963a)
REPLICATION, USING FILMED ROLE MODELS

A recent incident (San Francisco Chronicle, 1961) in which a boy was seriously knifed during a re-enactment of a switchblade knife fight the boys had seen the previous evening on a televised rerun of the James Dean movie Rebel Without A Cause, is a dramatic illustration of the possible imitative influence of film stimulation – Albert Bandura
Aim:

To find out if children would become more aggressive if exposed to an aggressive role model in film or in a less-realistic cartoon compared to watching a live model. Bandura also wanted to test the popular idea that watching filmed aggression might be “cathartic” (making people calmer because it “vents” their aggressive feelings).

IV

Bandura manipulated two sets of IVs: (1) whether the aggressive role model was real, filmed or a cartoon character, (2) whether the role model was the same sex or opposite sex to the child; there was also (3) a Control condition where the children did not see a role model at all. (NB. There was no Non-Aggressive Model this time)

Bandura also studied a naturally-varying IV: (4) whether the child was male or female.

This makes the study both a lab experiment and a natural experiment. It has a Matched Pairs design because each child was only in one condition but they had been matched on starting levels of aggression.

DV

Bandura’s observers recorded the number of verbal, physical, mallet and gun-play aggressive actions the children carried out; they also counted the number of acts of non-imitative aggression.

Sample

96 children, 48 boys and 48 girls, aged 3-5, recruited from Stanford University Nursery School (an opportunity sample).

Procedure

The basic procedure is described above. There was no Non-Aggressive Model condition, but an extra condition was added where children watched a film in which the female adult model was dressed as a cartoon cat, while following the script with the Bobo Doll.

Results

You can see at once that the Control group carried out half as much aggression as the other groups.

However, there’s no significant difference between live models and filmed or cartoon models.
When you look into the data, the cartoon produced more non-imitative aggression (100) but less imitative aggression (24) whereas the human models were the other way around.

Because Bandura filmed this study, there is qualitative data as well as quantitative data (all the footage in the video clips you see are actually from this variation).

Conclusions

Bandura concludes that children will imitate filmed aggression in the same way as live aggressive role models.

Bandura also concludes that watching filmed violence is NOT cathartic. Instead of becoming less aggressive after watching aggressive film or cartoons, the children showed more aggression.

Bandura was surprised to see how much the cartoon role model was imitated, because he expected there to be less imitation as the role model became less realistic (because the children would identify with it less). However, the cartoon aggression seemed to weaken social inhibitions generally, because there was less imitative aggression but more non-imitative aggression in this condition.
The results of the present study provide strong evidence that exposure to filmed aggression heightens aggressive reactions in children – Albert Bandura

BANDURA (1965)
REPLICATION, WITH REWARDS & PUNISHMENTS

Aim

To find out if children would be more likely to imitate a role model they see being rewarded (vicarious reinforcement) and less likely to imitate a role model they see being punished (vicarious punishment). He also wanted to see if the children would be more likely to imitate if they themselves were offered rewards.

IV

Bandura manipulated two sets of IVs: (1) whether the aggressive role model (“Rocky”) was rewarded, punished or there were no consequences, (2) whether the role model was the same sex or opposite sex to the child, and (3) whether the child received no incentive or a positive incentive (reward).

Bandura also studied a naturally-varying IV: (3) whether the child was male or female.

This makes the study both a lab experiment and a natural experiment. It is a Matched Pairs design because the children saw different role models but had been matched on starting aggression. It also has a Repeated Measures design because the children were in the No Incentive condition then put in the Positive Incentive condition.

DV

Bandura’s observers recorded the number of verbal, physical, mallet and gun-play aggressive actions the children carried out; they also counted the number of acts of non-imitative aggression.

Sample

66 children, 33 boys and 33 girls, aged 3-5, recruited from Stanford University Nursery School (an opportunity sample).

Procedure

The basic procedure is described above. There was no Non-Aggressive Model condition, but all the other conditions were filmed. The model (“Rocky”) went through a scripted routine of aggressive behaviour towards a Bobo Doll.

In the Reward condition, the experimenter arrived a praised Rocky for his “superb aggressive performance” and gave Rocky sweets, which he ate.

In in the Punishment condition, the experimenter called Rocky “a big bully” and hit him with a rolled-up newspaper.

In the No Consequences condition, nothing happened to Rocky.

The children were placed in the Observation Room for 10 minutes and secretly observed – this is the No Incentive condition.

Then they were brought juice and told they would get more juice and sticker books if they could imitate Rocky. They were asked to “show me what Rocky did” and “tell me what Rocky said.” If there was imitative aggression in response, they were rewarded straight away. This is the Positive Incentive condition.

Results

Bandura doesn’t report the exact scores for this study but you can see the results in this graph.
You can see that the Model Reward condition produced about the same imitation from girls (mean 2.8) and boys (3.5) as the No Consequences condition.

The Model Punished condition produced much less imitation, especially among the girls (mean 0.5).

After Positive Incentive, the imitation increased significantly for girls and boys and is very similar across all conditions of the model, with the girls’ scores much closer to the boys’ (all >3).

Conclusions

Bandura concludes that children will be less likely to imitate role models they see being punished. However, the No Consequences condition shows that behaviour doesn’t have to be punished or rewarded for it to be imitated.

When offered incentives, even children who watched the model being punished show that they had in fact learned the aggressive behaviour.

Girls are more restrained by the threat of punishment (perhaps due to cultural expectations), but this effect lessens when they are offered Positive Incentive to imitate the behaviour. Again, it shows that behaviour can be learned even when it isn’t acted out.
The present study provides further evidence that response inhibition and response disinhibition can be vicariously transmitted through observation of reinforcing consequences to a model’s behaviour – Albert Bandura

BANDURA'S QUALITATIVE DATA

Bandura filmed the 1963 study, providing qualitative data since we can watch and describe the children’s actual behaviour rather than just study his statistics. He also recorded some of the children’s comments about the role models:

  • The children were shocked by the aggressive female model, with one boy saying “That ain’t no way for a lady to behave!” and a girl saying “That girl… was acting just like a man!”
  • Boys and girls were admiring of the aggressive male role model: one boy said “Al’s a good socker, he beat up Bobo! I want to sock like Al!” and a girl said “He’s a good fighter, like Daddy!”