Bandura

toc =Introduction= There are two things to be learned here. One is the nature of social cognition--the way in which people learn through imitation. The other is the importance of human subjects committees in psychological research.

In this unit, you have the chance to read an original, classic study in the field of psychology, by Bandura and colleagues. You also can watch a short video made during the experiment. In this study, pre-schoolers in experimental groups watched various types of adults interact with some toys and were given the opportunity to play with the toys themselves. One toy was a Bobo doll, an inflatable clown toy with a weight in the base such that when the toy is punched, it goes back to vertical on its own. Some children watched either a man or a woman act aggressively with the Bobo doll. Later, when the children got an opportunity to play with the toys the adults played with, many children acted aggressively towards the Bobo doll, just as they watched the experimenters do.

There are some famous experiments from the 1960s where the effect of the experiment on the subjects could be extremely detrimental. One can imagine that these children, having seen this aggression by an adult during the experiment, may have carried this aggressive behavior into other settings such as at school and home.

Eventually, a human subjects review process ended the possibility of this kind of experimentation on people; before doing experiments on people, psychologists have to show that no harm will come to the people. The Bobo doll experiment would never have made it through the human subjects review process because its potential for teaching children how to be aggressive.

This study has formed the basis of our concerns about violent television shows and now video games.

=Original Video= media type="youtube" key="hHHdovKHDNU" height="315" width="420"

=Original Article= []

=Reading Comprehension Support= This study is written in classic 1960s-style psychological research. Here is a way of reading it that will help you to make sense:

1. Read the Summary first (it's right before the references, at the end of the article) 2. Start at the beginning and read the first section.

Now, let's figure out the Method and the groups. Table 1 is a summary (it's in the results portion).

Subjects 36 boys, 36 girls in a nursery school (we would call it a pre-school, so these children are ages 3-5) 1 adult male and 1 adult woman who serve as role models

24 children get put in a control group who do not witness either adult role model. In experiments, you have a control group just to see how your typical subjects respond to all the trappings of the research (they get everything except the role models--so they play with the toys and their behavior with the toys is measured.

The remainder of the children (46) are in various experimental groups:

24 of the experimental group get exposed to role models who are not being aggressive. 24 of the experimental group get exposed to violent role models.

Within each experimental group of 24, half the kids were exposed to role models who were of the same gender as them and the other half to role models that were different gender. So, within each group, 12 kids watch a role model of a different sex from themselves and the other 12 watch a role model who is of the same gender of them.

The table summarizes all of this. The left column describes the various specific actions and divides between male and female subjects, so you can see what girls and boys did. The middle columns divide the results by experimental group--aggressive role models, both male and female as well as non-aggressive role models, both male and female. The right hand column shows what the control groups did. The higher the number, the more aggressive the behaviors were.

3. Understanding the basic set up, now read the details of the Method section. Try to imagine the setup in your mind--or draw a map of what is happening (a map of the rooms they describe). If you are relatively new to reading experimental research, this can be challenging to understand, so use the map to reduce the amount of things you have to keep in mind while reading.

4. Concept: how do they know they are scoring the kids correctly? They are watching behavior, so how do they know that each person is rating the same behavior the same way. The article describes this, so take notice of it but don't sweat it. The "product-moment coefficient" refers to a measure of correlation. The closer this is to 1 (it's always between 0 and 1), the more similarity there is between the way people are rating children's behavior.

5. Results: You have seen the main table and presumably understand it. Now you are also going to see a number of statistical concepts that you can google to find out more about them if you choose. If you choose not to google them, understand that they are ways in which the authors are proving the significance of their findings--that their findings actually mean something. Table 2 is all about these statistical concepts. You can still get a lot of good out of this article without having to slog through the statistics. So, scan from here until you get to "Discussion."

6. Discussion: This section connects their research study with other studies and psychological pursuits. It truly reflects its time, of course, based on which psychologists they refer to and the topics that are important. Twenty-first century psychologists would probably not make reference to Freud in the study of aggression. Scan this (kinda sorta read it but not word for word) to see what the issues are.

7. Summary: You've already read this, but you can choose to re-read this.

=Optional: Read Updated Experiment Using Power Rangers= []

=Questions to Consider= 1. How might this study be relevant to teachers and others who work with human beings (social work, nursing, etc.)? 2. What are the implications of this study for teachers? 3. If you were going to do a study to find out how children learn through imitation, how could you do it so that it would not have a negative longterm effect on your subjects and that it would pass human subjects review?