Running head: Bobo Experiment
Pedro Plata
Psychology
1/30/13
The bobo doll experiment is a well-known experiment brought up by Albert Bandura, a psychologist who studied observation learning. This experiment is basically to see patterns of behavior combined with aggression. He believed that aggression should explain three parts. First part is how aggressive patterns of behavior are developed; second, what causes people to behave aggressively, and third, what determines if they’re going to continue to resort to aggressive behavior patterns in the future. Albert and his colleagues did this experiment on children between the ages 3 – 6 and used one adult male model and on adult female to do so. What Albert did was, he put 24 boys and girls in a room to watch a role model act aggressive towards the bobo doll, not just physical aggressiveness but also aggressive verbal use. Another 24 children were put to watch a model not act aggressive and 24 other children were used as a control group, no model. One child then was put in a room filled with cool toys that the child would enjoy, but he/she would not be able to touch them. The child then was put in a room with toys including the bobo doll the child saw the model acting aggressive to it. The child then grabbed items, for instance, a mallet to beat the bobo doll or toss, kick, and punch it like they saw the model do. Children who saw the non-aggressive model, when put in the room with toys they ignored the bobo doll. The children in the aggressive side did the exact same thing when observing the model beating the bobo doll with many different items. Not only that but the irritation of them not being able to to touch any of the cool toys earlier made them act even more aggressive towards the bobo doll. Using this experiment to see if children learn by observing an older role model definitely brought results. There are many children that act aggressive by watching others act aggressive, for example, if a child...