Bobo Doll
The Bobo doll experiment was the name of two experiments conducted by Albert Bandura in 1961 and 1963 studying patterns of behavior associated with aggression. The Bobo Doll used in the experiment is an inflatable toy that is roughly the same size as a young child. Bandura hoped that the experiments would prove that aggression can be explained, at least in part, by social learning theory. The theory of social learning would state that behavior such as aggression is learned through observing and imitating others.
The experiments are important because it sparked many more studies on the effects of violent media on children. In the experiment, children were randomly assigned to one of two groups. One group was exposed to a video of a woman attacking a Bobo doll, while the other groups of children were not exposed to any video. Bandura wanted to measure how many aggressive acts a child would commit after being exposed to someone else eliciting this kind of negative behavior. Bandura then placed each child, one by one, in a room with several toys, including a Bobo doll. He observed that the children who watched the video did not play with any other toys except for the Bobo doll, and they also imitated the same aggressive behavior the woman did in the video. Moreover, this experiment shows that children are likely to imitate a behavior whether it is a positive or negative behavior.
The subjects studied in the experiment involved 36 boys and 36 girls from the Stanford University Nursery School ranged between the ages of 3 and 6. The total of 72 children was split into 3 groups of 24. One group was put into an aggressive model scenario with half of that group observing a same-sex adult model and half observing a different-sex adult model. Another group was exposed to a non-aggressive adult model and the final group would be used as a control group and would not be exposed to any adult model at all. The children were pre-selected and sorted to ensure an even spread of
The experiments are important because it sparked many more studies on the effects of violent media on children. In the experiment, children were randomly assigned to one of two groups. One group was exposed to a video of a woman attacking a Bobo doll, while the other groups of children were not exposed to any video. Bandura wanted to measure how many aggressive acts a child would commit after being exposed to someone else eliciting this kind of negative behavior. Bandura then placed each child, one by one, in a room with several toys, including a Bobo doll. He observed that the children who watched the video did not play with any other toys except for the Bobo doll, and they also imitated the same aggressive behavior the woman did in the video. Moreover, this experiment shows that children are likely to imitate a behavior whether it is a positive or negative behavior.
The subjects studied in the experiment involved 36 boys and 36 girls from the Stanford University Nursery School ranged between the ages of 3 and 6. The total of 72 children was split into 3 groups of 24. One group was put into an aggressive model scenario with half of that group observing a same-sex adult model and half observing a different-sex adult model. Another group was exposed to a non-aggressive adult model and the final group would be used as a control group and would not be exposed to any adult model at all. The children were pre-selected and sorted to ensure an even spread of