Bandura's Theory Of The Bobo Doll Experiment

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The Bobo Doll experiment was conducted in 1961 by Bandura and his colleagues at Stanford University, to investigate if social behavior is learned through observing adult like aggressive behavior in the child’s environment. Bandura designed the Bobo doll experiment to see whether children would copy adult-like behaviors. In addition, whether children acted aggressively towards objects were either learned or inherited (Bandura, 1961). The theory being tested is social cognitive learning. Social cognitive learning is “how people acquire and maintain certain behavioral patterns, while also providing the basis for intervention strategies” (Bandura, 1997). Basically, it is evaluating the person’s behavioral action/ reaction depending in the environment, …show more content…

Secondly, the female children in the aggressive model were more physically aggressive if the model was a male but, verbally aggressive if the exemplary was a female. Thirdly, the male children would mimic same-sex model than female children. However, girl’s imitating same-sex models were not firm. Lastly, the group of boys imitated a physical violent behavior than, girls. There was a partial difference in the verbal aggression between female and male children (2011. McLeod). It can be stated that Bandura predicted correctly of children being exposed to aggressive model behavior were likely to imitate that behavior on themselves. Another, prediction that was proved correct was that boys were more likely to imitate aggressive behavior than girl (Shuttleworth, 2008). However, the study was inconclusive on its findings because, there was no accurate answer what leads children to have that aggression like …show more content…

However, it is certain that children that observe and learn these type of aggressive/violent like behaviors at school, home, or on television or prone to imitating these acts. According to an article “Bobo Doll Experiment” the author states “Bandura found that girls were much less likely to be physically violent, but were equally as prone to verbal aggression as boys... encountered in society, where bullying at school, by boys, is more often of a physical nature; intimidation amongst girls tends to be more verbal and social” (Shuttleworth, 2011). Bandura in this finding observed that girls were not as physically violent as boys, but were verbally aggressive just as boys. It is more likely of male to get into a physical altercation with another male individual than a female. However, there were criticism that the dolls springs was a strong possibility “that children saw it as playful game than, something else. This study was very important to the field of psychology because it wanted to prove that what children see or imitate can affect the way they behave in society. In addition, children were chosen to be picked as the subject because they were less exposed to

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