Bandura's Stages Of Aggression

Bandura is renowned for his BoBo Doll experiments from 1961 during which he assessed the observational learned behaviour of a group of children. Having split them into 3 groups he exposed 1 group to an adult who treated toys with respect and displaying pleasant behaviour, he presented another group with an adult that was behaving aggressively towards the toys and the control group that had no adult present. The play manner of these children was later assessed, there was a definite display of aggression from the children that had been exposed to the bad behaviour including the girls. The girls showed more aggression if their play model had been male, and children of both sexes displayed more physical behaviour following a male model and more
verbal aggression if the model was female. The evidence was compounding children most definitely learn from observing…
Developing and advancing traditional learning concepts, in 1977, 1982 and 1989, from his research
Bandura confirmed we learn from watching within social situations and imitating what we see. He suggested that we obtain much of our behaviour from observing and modelling and not always from direct reinforcement. This can be proven from just seeing a child acting out after watching his or her favourite TV programme. He has since rebranded his theory ‘social cognitive’ rather than ‘social learning’ as he fills the spaces between learning theory and cognitive development.