Background:
Theories:
Experimental Design: Matched grps-matched on pre-measured levels of aggression by teachers observing them in the playground using a 5 point likert scale before being allocated to groups. Controlled to:
Sample:
Room 1:
Child ps F M
F 13.7 2.0
M 4.3 12.7
Evaluation:
Research Method:
Sample:
Reliability:
Validity:
Usefulness:
Ethical Issues:
Improvements & Implications:
1) Ethical:
Get informed consent/R to W/debrief: disclose the aim of the study on Social Learning Theory and aggression to the children's parents and ask them to sign a return slip giving their permission for their child to be used in the study.
Do a field experiment; in the classroom with the other children and the teacher is the model.
Increase sample size from different areas of US.
Theories:
- Social learning theory- individuals imitate the actions of their role models
- Operant conditioning- behaviour learnt through reinforcement. e.g rewards encourage the same behaviour again). Basically behaviour is modified by the consequences of our actions.
- Classical conditioning- association between stimuli. e.g Pavlov's dogs salivated at the sound of bells as this was the sound before they were given food. This usually triggers a natural response-like the salivation in the dogs.
- Investigate whether children would IMITATE aggressive behaviour when given the OPPORTUNITY, even if they saw the behaviours in a DIFFERENT ENVIRONMENT and the original model they observed performing the aggressive act was NO LONGER PRESENT.
- children exposed the the aggressive behaviour would produce MORE imitated aggressive acts
- children who observed the non-aggressive model behaviour would behave most CALMLY
- children more likely to imitate a SAME SEX model
- BOYS imitate more aggressive acts than girls
Experimental Design: Matched grps-matched on pre-measured levels of aggression by teachers observing them in the playground using a 5 point likert scale before being allocated to groups. Controlled to:
- To control for individual differences in levels of aggression so all the aggressive children did not end up in the same group.
- To make it a fair test so not all the aggressive children ended up in the same group.
- So level of aggression was not a confounding variable that could have influenced results.
- Present/not present
- M/F
- Behaved aggressively/non-aggressively
Sample:
- 72 children (half of each M & F)
- Stanford Uni Nursery School (US)
- 3-6 years
- Children were rated for their matched for their aggression before being allocated to their groups to prevent individual differences becoming an extraneous variable.
- 1 Male & 1 Female behaved in standardised way
- Played both the aggressive & non-aggressive roles
- Aggressive model said: 'sock him on the nose'
- Non-aggressive model said: 'he sure is a tough fella'
Room 1:
- 10 mins
- In the main nursery building, so familiar to the children
- Experimenter, model, children (except those in control group)
- Child was encouraged to play at a table with picture stickers and potato prints in one corner.
- The model was escorted to other corner of room and told they could play with the Bobo doll, Tinkertoy set (construction set of shapes to fit together).
- Experimenter left room
- After 1 min, model played aggressively/non-aggressively towards the Bobo doll depending on the condition they were in.
- Idea was that the child would observe the model behaviour
- Away from the main nursery building
- All children
- Supposed to AROUSE MILD AGGRESSION by allowing the children play with attractive toys (e.g. fire engine, dolls set with a wardrobe and baby crib).
- Then after 2 mins take them away.
- The experimenter said the toys had to be reserved for other children.
- (The experimenters felt this essential as:
- Because observing aggressive behaviour may reduce the probability of behaving aggressively, so without provocation, those who had observed the aggressive model may have been less likely to behave aggressively.
- Because the children who watched the non-aggressive model might be inhibited from behaving aggressively because of what they had observed.
- To provide a common basis of arousal for all the children (as a control for aggression).
- 20 mins
- Next to room 2, away from the main building; so that the setting was in a DIFFERENT ENVIRONMENT to where the children had observed the model behaviour.
- Experimenter took the child into the room and STAYED with them.
- Experimenter worked DISCRETELY at the other end of the room to avoid affecting the children's behaviour.
- There was always the same amount of toys and their position was standardised so that no toy was more likely to be played with than another between children.
- Aggressive toys: 3 ft Bobo doll, mallet, dart gun
- Non-aggressive toys: bear, cars, crayons
- Connected to a room with a ONE-WAY MIRROR, from which 2 observers who recorded EVERY 5 SECONDS the behaviour of the child (either aggressive or non-aggressive). This gave 240 observations for each child- high inter-observer reliability.
- Children who were exposed to the aggressive model produced more imitative physical and verbal aggressive acts than the children in the other conditions.
- Children who saw the non-aggressive model showed low levels of aggression.
- Boys were more aggressive in gun-play in all conditions.
- Boys in the control grp were overall more aggressive than girls.
- More boys imitated male models for physical and verbal aggression than girls.
- Boys were more physically aggressive with the aggressive model.
- Boys were more aggressive in gun play with the non-aggressive model.
- Overall boys shown more imitative aggression than girls.
- Children more likely to imitate the same-sex imitating than the opposite-sex model.
- Children imitated the same sex model more for the verbal aggression and girls imitated the female model for this type of aggression more than boys:
Child ps F M
F 13.7 2.0
M 4.3 12.7
- Children demonstrated more mallet aggression with the male aggressive model (18.7 and 28.8, compared to 17.2 and 15.5).
- 'I want to sock like Al'-shows the child wanted to imitate the hitting of the Bobo doll that they had seen by the male model (who had the standardised name of Al).
- Modelling is a form of observational learning (if you watch something you learn from it).
- This supports the Social Identification Theory (people imitate the behaviour they seen the model do).
- Learning can occur without the learner receiving reinforcement, but suggestive reinforcement may play an important part in the learners decision to perform the behaviour at an appropriate point (The model doesn't need to be seen to reinforce behaviour).
- Reinforcement is a factor that may influence the performance of a learned behaviour (there is no + or - consequence of their behaviour but still copied).
Evaluation:
Research Method:
Sample:
Reliability:
Validity:
Usefulness:
Ethical Issues:
Improvements & Implications:
1) Ethical:
Get informed consent/R to W/debrief: disclose the aim of the study on Social Learning Theory and aggression to the children's parents and ask them to sign a return slip giving their permission for their child to be used in the study.
- + = more ethical, protects reputation (adhering to ethical guidelines shows study in a better way)
- - = DCs, children U16 can't give their consent/understand that they are taking part in research
Do a field experiment; in the classroom with the other children and the teacher is the model.
- + = more economically valid
- - = less control; ethical issues-children seeing their teacher being aggressive may make the children stressed
Increase sample size from different areas of US.
- + = more representative of target population, more generalisable
- - = time consuming