Applying Albert Banduras Bobo Doll Theory to Any Criminal Behavior

In this essay I will demonstrate how Albert Banduras Bobo doll theory can be applied to criminal behaviour in today’s society and how his method has some flaws to the structure when applying it in to today’s societal issues which will be going under critique. The criminological theory that this applies to is the social learning theory implying that people will imitate or copy what other people do this especially applies to children as they seek approval from their parents and others. I will explain other research methods available and why they were not used.

Albert Bandura conducted a famous experiment known as the Bobo doll experiment. The experiment has helped in developing the social learning theory.

Bandura had 4 hypothesises for his experiment. His hypothesises being that the male children will tend to be more violent than female children this is because males tend to be more violent in nature than females which society usually tolerates. Another hypothesis was that the gender of the role model that has been watched will influence the children of the same sex because the child would identify themselves with the adult and think this is how I can behave. Another being that the children that had been exposed to the non-aggressive role model will be less likely to advocate the violent tendencies than the other group of children. His last theory was that the children watching the role model behaving aggressive will replicate similar actions to those performed by the model. (Martyn Shuttleworth Mar 26, 2008)

The method Bandura used for this experiment; Bandura got 36 males and 36 females at the age range of 3-6 years old from Stanford University Nursery School and the role models for this experiment was one male and one female ...

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... using the toy to stop any harm from occurring is beneficial for everyone because it is letting children take their frustrations out on the toys not causing harm to another person.

To conclude although there are flaws to Bandura’s method it still provides evidence of how important his research was demonstrating how different attitudes and behaviours towards children, can change the child’s morals of what is right and wrong which if left without punishment it could lead into criminal behaviour.

As demonstrated above Bandura’s methods have been applied to today’s societal issues and adapted to how I would have done it if it was conducted by me. Other research methods have been analysed in comparison to the method Bandura had used and found that his method of using observational research is the only one that would gather enough data that is relevant to his hypothesis.