Laura Henderson
Psychology
Bandura Essay
A) The Bandura study aimed to see if children copying aggression that they see in adults. In the study a male or female model was aggressive toward a bobo doll, the children were then observed to see if they imitated any behaviour shown by the model, or if they were/weren’t aggressive. There were also 2 control groups, one of which had seen a non aggressive male/female model and another group was observed after seeing no model.
The results showed that the children were more aggressive when they had seen the aggressive model. Boys were, on average, more aggressive than girls. The gender of the model also had an affect on the behaviour of the children. Boys were more aggressive (both verbally and physically) when they had seen the aggressive male model. Girls were more physically aggressive when they had seen the aggressive male model BUT were more verbally aggressive when they had seen the aggressive female model.
B) Snapshot studies can be very useful for looking at specific details of behaviour or if the experimenters are lacking time and money. There are, however some problems of snapshot studies, like the one carried out by Bandura.
1. Snapshot studies are time specific; this means that the results are dependant on whatever is going on at the time. For example the mood of the participants or experimenter can change on a daily basis and therefore affect the results, because it can change the way people behave or change the way that the experimenter will look at the data. Cultural change over time may also have an affect on the results or the interpretation of the results. In the Bandura study things could have happened to affect the behaviour of the children e.g. they had been told off by the parents that morning. This may have made the child more aggressive than it would usually have been which would show that child as being more aggressive and so affecting the results. There was also a big cultural change in the years following Banduras’ study. When this study took place there were very stereotypical views of men and women, this means that the children may have been reluctant to copy the behaviour of the aggressive female model, but were more likely to copy the behaviour of the aggressive male model, because society at the time expected more aggression from men. Girls may also have been less aggressive at that time because it was what was expected from society and vice versa with the boys.
