Question

what was the purpose/hypotheses, basic method, findings, limitations/criticisms, issues, and how can we use the information today from the Bobo Doll experiment? What topic in social psychology did it help define?

Answer 1

The Bobo Doll Experiment was performed in 1961 by Albert Bandura, to try and add credence to his belief that all human behavior was learned, through social imitation and copying, rather than inherited through genetic factors.famous and influential experiment known as the Bobo doll experiment, Albert Bandura and his colleagues demonstrated one way that children learn aggression. According to Bandura's social learning theory, learning occurs through observations and interactions with other people. Essentially, people learn by watching others and then imitating these actions.

Bandura made several predictions about what would occur:

1. He predicted that children who observed an adult acting aggressively would be likely to act aggressively even when the adult model was not present.
2. The children who observed the non-aggressive adult model would be less aggressive than the children who observed the aggressive model; the non-aggressive exposure group would also be less aggressive than the control group.
3. Children would be more likely to imitate models of the same-sex rather than models of the opposite-sex.
4. Boys would behave more aggressively than girls.

Method Used in the Bobo Doll Experiment

The participants for the experiment were 36 boys and 36 girls enrolled at the Stanford University Nursery School. The children ranged in age between 3 and almost 6 years, and the average participant age was 4 years 4 months.

There were a total of eight experimental groups. Out of these participants, 24 were assigned to a control group that received no treatment. The rest of the children were then divided into two groups of 24 participants each. One of the experimental groups was then exposed to aggressive models, while the other 24 children were exposed to non-aggressive models.

Finally, these groups were divided again into groups of boys and girls. Each of these groups was then divided so that half of the participants were exposed to a same-sex adult model and the other half were exposed to an opposite-sex adult model.

Results of the Bobo Doll Experiment

The results of the experiment supported three of the four original predictions.

1. Children exposed to the violet model tended to imitate the exact behavior they had observed when the adult was no longer present.
2. Bandura and his colleagues had also predicted that children in the non-aggressive group would behave less aggressively than those in the control group. The results indicated that while children of both genders in the non-aggressive group did exhibit less aggression than the control group, boys who had observed an opposite-sex model behave non-aggressively were more likely than those in the control group to engage in violence.
3. 3There were important gender differences when it came to whether a same-sex or opposite-sex model was observed. Boys who observed adult males behaving violently were more influenced than those who had observed female models behaving aggressively. Interestingly, the experimenters found in the same-sex aggressive groups, boys were more likely to imitate physical acts of violence while girls were more likely to imitate verbal aggression.
4. 4.The researchers were also correct in their prediction that boys would behave more aggressively than girls. Boys engaged in more than twice as many acts of aggression than the girls.

Criticisms of the Bobo Doll Experiment

As with any experiment, the Bobo doll study is not without criticisms:

• Because the experiment took place in a lab setting, some critics suggest that results observed in this type of location may not be indicative of what takes place in the real world.
• The study might suffer from selection bias. All participants were drawn from a narrow pool of students who share the same racial and socioeconomic background. This makes it difficult to generalize the results to a larger, more diverse population.
• Since data was collected immediately, it is also difficult to know what the long-term impact might have been.

• Acting violently toward a doll is a lot different than displaying aggression or violence against another human being in a real world setting.
• It has also been suggested that children were not actually motivated to display aggression when they hit the Bobo doll; instead, they may have simply been trying to please the adults.
• Some critics argue that the study itself is unethical. By manipulating the children into behaving aggressively, they argue, the experimenters were essentially teaching the children to be aggressive.

The topic is impact of violence on children's behaviour .