Outline and Evaluate research into causes of aggression

Bandura stated children and adults acquire new styles of conduct through filmed and televised modelling, which shows television violence could cause a person to become aggressive. Phillips (1986) also found evidence that supports the SLT. He discovered homicide rate in the U.S always increased; the week following a major boxing match. It suggests viewers were imitating the behaviour they watched and that social learning is evident in adults. However there is no direct evidence to link homicide rate with those who watched the match.

In the study of the bobo dolls, groups of children were shown a film where models acted aggressively towards a bobo doll. The models were in a room surrounded by toys including the bobo doll. Half the group of children were exposed to a non aggressive film involving the models encounters with the bobo doll.  Findings showed aggressive conditioned children showed a lot of physical and verbal aggression. Those in the non aggressive and control groups exhibited virtually no aggression. Exposure to the aggressive model increased disinhibition generally and made the children more likely to imitate any behaviour. Boys showed more aggression then girls.

The bobo doll study implies that people behave the way they do by observing their surroundings and imitating what they see. It shows that children do learn to reproduce specific forms of aggression simply by observing a model. It also infers that boys are more likely to imitate than girls. The children may have guessed what’s going on hence behave different from how they would normally. A negative criticism to this experiment is that it may not necessarily be the models that provoked the aggression but other factors. Also, the experiment was not done in a natural situation and has been criticised as lacking ecological validity, as you never see adults beating dolls. It does not explore aggression in a real life setting. The bobo doll was designed to be hit and unlike in real life the children could strike out without fear of retaliation from the victim. Conclusions would not be valid for real life.

Some positive points are; both the film and live models produce similar results. Therefore the theory of operant conditioning is true whether direct or indirect. This suggests that aggression may be caused by reinforcement. Another strength of this study is that extraneous factors such as individual differences were controlled; participants in experiments and control groups were matched with the same rating of aggression. This is a positive criticism as it means the findings of the experiment would be more accurate. However, high control leads to the loss of real- life validity.

Despite limitations the bobo doll study has been hugely influential and concludes that, the acquisition and production of aggression is socially meditated.