Albert Bandura's Bobo Experiment
Albert Bandura was born in a small Canadian town called Mundare on December 4, 1925. His parents came from Eastern Europe, his father from Poland and mother from Ukraine. He is the youngest of six children and the only son. Before Bandura was born, a sister died of the flu and a brother died in a hunting accident. The school that Bandura was the only school in the whole town, it was both the elementary and high school. The school was very short on teachers, and all of the high school curriculum was taught by only two teachers. This made students take charge of their education if they truly wanted to learn. Bandura knew that the tools of self-directedness would help him later in life. His parents always encouraged him to get out of their small
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town of Mundare. Bandura decided to get a carpentry job in the nearby town of Edmonton, and those skills he learned would then help him to pay for college. Neither of his parents were formally education but they knew how important education is. They wanted Bandura to leave and go receive a higher education so that he does not end up drinking his life away in Mundare. He attended University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Bandura did not start off his college career as a psychology major and intended in majoring in biological sciences. But because he worked at the woodwork plant in the afternoon, he needed a heavy morning course load. He randomly found a psychology class in the course catalog for a good filler course. That filler course then sparked his interest and Bandura decided to major in psychology. In 1949, he graduated with the Bolocan Award in psychology. When Bandura was picking where he wanted to attend graduate school, he wanted to go to a school that had a rich history of psychology so his advisor told him to go to the University of Iowa. While at University of Iowa, he studied under Kenneth Spence, Clark Hull and Arthur Benton. He received his Master’s Degree in 1951 and his Ph.D. in clinical psychology in 1952, both from the University of Iowa. In 1952, he married Virginia Varns. They had two daughters, Mary and Carol. In 1953, Bandura joined the faculty at Stanford University. Bandura wrote many books in his career including Self-efficacy: the exercise of control (1997), Social Learning through Imitation (1962), Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory (1986), and Social Learning Theory (1977). In 1964, he was elected Fellow of the APA and during the 1969-70 academic year, he spent time as a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. In 1976, he served as chairman of the Psychology Department at Stanford. He has won countless awards and honorary degrees including the Outstanding Lifetime Contribution to Psychology Award from the APA and the Gold Medal Award for Distinguished Lifetime Contribution to Psychological Sciences (Pajares, 2004). During the time that Bandura was doing research in the 1960s in the United States, there was of hostility and anger throughout the nation. The civil rights was a big issue and it lead to high tensions all over the country. Peers at Stanford University had been studying nonaggressive reactions to frustration in teenage boys. After observing these studies and coming from Canada, Bandura could not understand why boys that came from great family and home lives were so aggressive outside of the house. Seeing all the hate in the country and violence during this time sparked his interest in aggression and social learning (Taylor, 2001). After observing these adolescent boys demonstrate aggressive behaviors and attitudes, Bandura wanted to know where this aggression was learned from. He then discovered that these families demanded that their sons are tough and settle their arguments with classmates on their own, even if that means being physical. The parents also would demonstrate aggression towards the school system, who they believed were giving their sons a hard time at school and would always side with their sons verse the school. Bandura then wanted to search to see if behaviors can be learned from modeling or if these behaviors were just genetic. Later in his research, he wanted to know how we learned and if it was because of modeling or if people had an actual thirst for knowledge. Bandura found that our social attitudes and behaviors are learned through observation and modeling (Bandura, 1961; Bandura, 1977). Albert Bandura is most well known in the field of psychology for his Bobo Doll experiment.
This study was made to investigate if social behaviors can be obtained from observation and imitation. In this study, he had 72 children broken up into three conditions, aggressive, non-aggressive, and no model. In the aggressive group, children watched a model attack a Bobo doll with both physical and verbal abuse and in the non-aggressive group, children watched a model play with toys and ignore the Bobo doll. Then the child is put into a room full of toys and allowed to play with them. Two minutes later, the child is told that they can no longer play with these toys. The child is then taken into another room with both aggressive and non-aggressive toys. The observers then watch the child and record any imitative aggression, non-imitative aggression and partial imitation. The results were that exposure to aggressive modeling increase aggressive behaviors and then lead to children assaulting the Bobo doll with gun or other toys that was never modeled for them before. This experiment then help Bandura develop his idea of the Social Learning Theory. This theory agrees with the learning theories of classical conditioning and operant conditioning but adds two important ideas that behavior is learned from one’s environment through observation and mediating process occur between stimuli and responses. The Social Learning Theory is seen as a bridge between traditional learning theory and cognitive approach. Unlike Skinner, Bandura believe that humans do not observe a behavior and automatically imitate it, there is some thought beforehand and this is called mediational processes. This occurs between the behavior (stimulus) and the imitating it or not (response). Bandura is also known for creating the definition of self-efficacy. Self- efficacy is the belief that a person has in them self to accomplish a task or be successful. (Bandura, 1961; Bandura, 1977; Bandura, 1997; The Bobo
Beatdown).
town of Mundare. Bandura decided to get a carpentry job in the nearby town of Edmonton, and those skills he learned would then help him to pay for college. Neither of his parents were formally education but they knew how important education is. They wanted Bandura to leave and go receive a higher education so that he does not end up drinking his life away in Mundare. He attended University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Bandura did not start off his college career as a psychology major and intended in majoring in biological sciences. But because he worked at the woodwork plant in the afternoon, he needed a heavy morning course load. He randomly found a psychology class in the course catalog for a good filler course. That filler course then sparked his interest and Bandura decided to major in psychology. In 1949, he graduated with the Bolocan Award in psychology. When Bandura was picking where he wanted to attend graduate school, he wanted to go to a school that had a rich history of psychology so his advisor told him to go to the University of Iowa. While at University of Iowa, he studied under Kenneth Spence, Clark Hull and Arthur Benton. He received his Master’s Degree in 1951 and his Ph.D. in clinical psychology in 1952, both from the University of Iowa. In 1952, he married Virginia Varns. They had two daughters, Mary and Carol. In 1953, Bandura joined the faculty at Stanford University. Bandura wrote many books in his career including Self-efficacy: the exercise of control (1997), Social Learning through Imitation (1962), Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory (1986), and Social Learning Theory (1977). In 1964, he was elected Fellow of the APA and during the 1969-70 academic year, he spent time as a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. In 1976, he served as chairman of the Psychology Department at Stanford. He has won countless awards and honorary degrees including the Outstanding Lifetime Contribution to Psychology Award from the APA and the Gold Medal Award for Distinguished Lifetime Contribution to Psychological Sciences (Pajares, 2004). During the time that Bandura was doing research in the 1960s in the United States, there was of hostility and anger throughout the nation. The civil rights was a big issue and it lead to high tensions all over the country. Peers at Stanford University had been studying nonaggressive reactions to frustration in teenage boys. After observing these studies and coming from Canada, Bandura could not understand why boys that came from great family and home lives were so aggressive outside of the house. Seeing all the hate in the country and violence during this time sparked his interest in aggression and social learning (Taylor, 2001). After observing these adolescent boys demonstrate aggressive behaviors and attitudes, Bandura wanted to know where this aggression was learned from. He then discovered that these families demanded that their sons are tough and settle their arguments with classmates on their own, even if that means being physical. The parents also would demonstrate aggression towards the school system, who they believed were giving their sons a hard time at school and would always side with their sons verse the school. Bandura then wanted to search to see if behaviors can be learned from modeling or if these behaviors were just genetic. Later in his research, he wanted to know how we learned and if it was because of modeling or if people had an actual thirst for knowledge. Bandura found that our social attitudes and behaviors are learned through observation and modeling (Bandura, 1961; Bandura, 1977). Albert Bandura is most well known in the field of psychology for his Bobo Doll experiment.
This study was made to investigate if social behaviors can be obtained from observation and imitation. In this study, he had 72 children broken up into three conditions, aggressive, non-aggressive, and no model. In the aggressive group, children watched a model attack a Bobo doll with both physical and verbal abuse and in the non-aggressive group, children watched a model play with toys and ignore the Bobo doll. Then the child is put into a room full of toys and allowed to play with them. Two minutes later, the child is told that they can no longer play with these toys. The child is then taken into another room with both aggressive and non-aggressive toys. The observers then watch the child and record any imitative aggression, non-imitative aggression and partial imitation. The results were that exposure to aggressive modeling increase aggressive behaviors and then lead to children assaulting the Bobo doll with gun or other toys that was never modeled for them before. This experiment then help Bandura develop his idea of the Social Learning Theory. This theory agrees with the learning theories of classical conditioning and operant conditioning but adds two important ideas that behavior is learned from one’s environment through observation and mediating process occur between stimuli and responses. The Social Learning Theory is seen as a bridge between traditional learning theory and cognitive approach. Unlike Skinner, Bandura believe that humans do not observe a behavior and automatically imitate it, there is some thought beforehand and this is called mediational processes. This occurs between the behavior (stimulus) and the imitating it or not (response). Bandura is also known for creating the definition of self-efficacy. Self- efficacy is the belief that a person has in them self to accomplish a task or be successful. (Bandura, 1961; Bandura, 1977; Bandura, 1997; The Bobo
Beatdown).