What does Bandura's study of Aggression tell us about development?

What does Bandura’s study of Aggression tell us about development?
- Bandura’s research suggested that we learn our behaviour from our social environment.
- Bandura used this research to develop his Social Learning Theory. This theory sets out one way in which children develop their behaviour as they grow older.
- The theory (SLT) suggests that we can learn from role models or significant others, simply by observing their behaviour – no reinforcement is needed.
The role model must be someone who is of high social status for that individual – an adult, teacher, popstar, or older peer.
This person is seen as successful and worthy of copying.
- Bandura found that children will model their behaviour on an adult role model. The model acted in an aggressive way (and showed the same types of aggression – imitation) than children who had observed a non-aggressive model.
This was only true of children who observed the same sex role model, which suggests that females are not significant others for boys.
- These findings would suggest that a child’s development can be easily shaped into any form of behaviour. According to this theory, a child could develop anti-social or pro-social behaviour by observation.
- One other finding was that the children who observed the non-aggressive model also showed some aggression (non-imitative aggression). This would suggest that they had either learned to be aggressive in some previous situation or that aggressive play was innate (built-in).
What does Bandura’s Study tell us about early childhood experiences?
This study tells us the following:
- That we can learn from our social environment at the age of 37-69 months.
- We learn from role models or significant others who are of high social status or significance to us. – In this study it was an adult (male and female)
- It would suggest that we only have to see something once for it to influence our behaviour.
- It would suggest that we as children are very vulnerable to outside influences and that our behaviour can be shaped for good (pro-social) or bad (anti-social) by those around us.
- His findings for the power of the same sex role models suggest that Males influence boys and females influence girls.
- Thus for a child to develop in a way which would make them pro-social, the child would need to be surrounded by pro-social models.
- The study does not tell us anything about free-will (can we make our own judgements).
