Approach Details:

Definition:
● Developmental psychology is interested in discovering the psychological processes of
development.
● Bandura's approach is an extension of behavioural theories which emphasise the way we
learn behaviour from others, our environment, experiences and so on.
● Bandura was particularly interested in the way children learn new behaviours through
observing and imitating role models.

Assumption:
Behaviorism is based on the assumption that:
● All learning occurs through interactions with the environment.
● The environment shapes behavior.
● Taking internal mental states such as thoughts, feelings, and emotions into consideration
is useless in explaining behavior.

Strengths:
● Very useful applications to real life. For example, developmental psychology has led to
huge changes in education systems in the last 50 years. Childcare is another area that
has been very influenced by the findings of developmental psychology research.
● Children require simple experiments with standardised procedures if they are to
understand what they are doing. This is a big advantage, as it means that the findings
from the experiments are likely to be more reliable.

Weakness:
● Children are very easily influenced by other people. Demand characteristics can
therefore occur very easily.
● Younger children are not able to communicate with researchers, or to understand
difficult experimental tasks. This means that researchers often have to find ingenious
ways of reading infants' responses. These indirect measures of the dependent variable
(such as looking time in the Langlois study) are based on assumptions and may not be
valid.
 ● There are ethical issues with the use of children. Children under 16 require parental
consent to participate in experiments, but as they cannot give consent themselves, they
may not want to participate.Younger children are also very unlikely to understand that
they have a right to withdraw.

Bandura et al. Study (Aggression) :

Psychology being investigated:

Social Learning Theory
4 principle of SLT- attention, retention, reproduction, motivation.

Background:
Previous studies have shown that more observation of responses of a model has an effect on a
subject’s reaction in the immediate social influence setting. These studies show the influence
that a model can have on their subject, but a more crucial test of imitative learning involves the
repetition of imitative responses in new settings in the absence of the model.

Aim:
The aim was to investigate whether a child would learn aggression by observing a model and
would reproduce this behaviour in the absence of the model, and whether the sex of the role
model was important. There were four hypotheses.
-Subjects exposed to aggressive models would reproduce aggressive acts resembling those of
their models, and would be more aggressive and subjects observing non aggressive models or
no models.
- Observation of non-aggressive models leads the subject to imitate them, and hence they are
less aggressive than those observing no model, who display significantly more aggression.
-Subjects imitate the behaviour of a same-sex model more than that of the opposite sex.
-Boys should be more predisposed than girls to imitating aggression, the difference being most
marked to the male aggressive model.
Research method:
Laboratory Experiment

Research design:
Independent measures design (with matched participants design)

IV:
Model type, model sex, learner sex

DV:
Aggression displayed- operationalised through controlled observation. Refer to your notes. This
was discussed detailed in class.

Method of collecting data:

Time & Event Sampling

Sample:
72 children (36 boys, 36 girls) between ages 3 and 6 enrolled in the Stanford University Nursery
School. Opportunity sampling was done.

Model:
One male and one female served as the models.

Experimenter:
One female experimenter conducted the study for all the children and sat in the corner of the
room indulging in paperwork.
One male scored all the children’s behaviour, and he was unaware of which condition they were
in except when he served as the model.
To check for interobserver reliability, there was a second observer who independently rated the
behaviour for half the subjects and there was a positive correlation of 0.9.

Creating the matched participants design:

-aggression levels observed by experimenter and teacher (interrater reliability of 0.89)
-rated on 5 point scales (physical aggression, verbal aggression, aggression towards inanimate
objects and aggressive inhibition)
-assigned in triplets with similar aggression levels
-one from each group put in each experimental condition- reduces participant variables
-12 boys and 12 girls were in the control group.

Experimental conditions:
2 experimental conditions (aggressive and non-aggressive) and 1 control group

Condition Model Sex of Model Sex of Children N

1 Aggressive Males Males 6

2 Females 6

3 Females Males 6

4 Females 6

5 Non-Aggressive Males Males 6

6 Females 6

7 Females Males 6

8 Females 6

Control None N/A Males & Females 24

Observation room:
Subjects were brought individually by the experimenter to the experimental room, and the
model who was standing outside the room was invited by the experimenter to join.
Children were kept invested in playing with toys that they enjoyed- designing pictures with
potato prints and stickers. At the opposite end of the room, there was a tinker toy set, mallet,
and a bobo doll. This is where the model performed their task. The experimenter explained
that these toys were for the model, and then left the room.
In the non-aggressive condition, the model assembled the tinkle toy for 10 minutes.
In the aggressive condition, he assembled it for only 1 minute, after which the model attacked
the bobo doll- he sat on it, punched it, hit its head with a mallet, and tossed it in the air and
kicked it. This sequence was performed thrice, along with comments such as “kick him”, “sock
him” and two non-aggressive ones, which were standardised.
At the end of 10 minutes, the experimenter entered the room and told the subjects that they
would now go to another game room, and bid the model goodbye.

Aggression Arousal:
All participants were aggressively aroused. This was done for two reasons.
1) Watching aggression may reduce production of aggressive behaviour by the learner, and it
was important to see learning.
2) To ensure that even non-aggressive and control groups have the ability to express aggression,
thus any changes would be solely due to learning.
This aggression arousal was done by exposing children to a bunch of fun toys for a bit, but as
soon as the subject was involved with the boys, taking the toys away from them and saying that
these are special toys which only some other children have the right to play with. They then
went to another experimental room.

Test for delayed imitation:

Children were then observed for 20 minutes in intervals of 5 seconds using a one-way mirror.
This room, where the test for delayed imitation happened, contained the toys which were used
to create aggression(bobo doll, mallet, peg board, dart guns) and non-aggression toys (like tea
sets, cars and trucks). The toys were placed in the same manner for each session. There were 3
response measures: imitative physical aggression, imitative verbal aggression, and imitative
non-aggressive verbal responses. Imitation of physical aggression: striking the bobo doll with
mallet, sitting on it, punching it, kicking it, tossing it in the air.
Imitation of verbal aggression: “Sock him”, “Kick him”, “Pow”, etc.
Imitative non aggressive verbal responses: “He keeps coming back for more”, “tough fella”.
There were also 2 measures for partial imitative aggression: mallet aggression (towards objects
other than the bobo doll) and sitting on the bobo doll. 2 further categories were: aggressive gun
play and non-imitative physical and verbal aggression(punches the bobo doll, “shoot the bobo”,
“cut him”, etc).
Ratings were also made of the behaviour units in which the subject played non-aggressively or
sat quietly.
Two observers scored the behaviour independently, and the interscorer reliability was 0.9.

Results:
- Children exposed to aggressive models imitated their exact behaviour and were significantly
more aggressive, both physically and verbally, than children in the non-aggressive or control
groups.
The children in the aggressive condition also repeated the model’s non-aggressive verbal
responses, while none of the subjects in the non-aggressive or control groups made such
remarks.
-The treatment condition is highly significant both for physical and verbal imitative aggression.
-1st form of partial aggression: Both the aggressive and control groups produced more mallet
aggression than the non-aggressive group, the difference being particularly marked for female
subjects. The aggressive group produced more mallet aggression than the control group, but the
difference was not statistically significant.
-2nd form of partial aggression: With respect to sitting on the bobo doll, the aggressive group
reproduced the model’s behaviour to a much larger extent than the non-aggressive or control
groups.
-Treatment conditions are not significant for gun play or sitting on the bobo doll.
-Treatment conditions were significant for non-imitative physical and verbal aggression, with
subjects in the aggressive group displaying the most aggression.
-Boys were more likely to imitate physical aggression.
-Girls were more likely to imitate verbal aggression.
-In the Sex X Model Interaction, the score for imitative physical aggression for girls (girls
subjects and female models) was 5.5, but for boys (with male models) it was 25.8. Boys exposed
to male models produced physical and verbal imitative aggression, non-imitative aggression, and
engaged in more gun play than did girls exposed to male models.
-The same for verbal aggression was 13.7 for girls, while for the boys was 12.7, though the
differences between the non-aggressive and control groups was not very significant.
-The behaviour of the male model exerted a greater influence than the female model on
subjects’ behaviour in the generalization situation.
-It was observed that the non-aggressive group was much less likely to show mallet aggression,
imitative physical aggression, imitative verbal aggression, and non-imitative physical and verbal
aggression- especially with the non-aggressive male model than female model.
-Some comments and behaviour was also linked with sex-typed and sex appropriate behaviour.
Example, girls played more with the tea set while boys played more with the guns. Similarly,
comments about the female model’s aggression were disapproving, while comments about the
male model’s aggression were encouraged.
-Subjects in non-aggressive condition engaged in more non-aggressive play with dolls than
subjects in the aggressive or control groups.
-Subjects in the non-aggressive group spent more than twice as much time than subjects in the
aggressive condition in simply sitting without handling any material.

Discussion
- This study throws light on the fact that observation of behaviour can produce elicitation of the
behaviour - with no reinforcement/punishment.
-There is consistent evidence that male models have more influence than female models, which
can be attributed to the fact that they are seen in a higher authoritative position, in turn
advancing the male’s reward value.
-Male models are more influential with physical aggression, but same-sex models are more
influential with verbal aggression.
-Aggression by female models was disapproved- “Who is that lady. That’s not the way for a lady
to behave.”, “Ladies are supposed to act like ladies”, “She was acting just like a man”, but
aggression by male models was encouraged- “He’s a good fighter like daddy”
-Further studies: feared aggressive models, those who are esteemed, or essentially neutral
figures, may affect the behaviour of subjects differently and hence throw some light on the
“identification with aggressor” theory

Ethics:
- psychologically distressing for the children
- may cause lifelong problems for kids, encourage them to behave more aggressively
- nevertheless, hitting the bobo doll etc was considered as normal play to the children
-no informed consent was taken

Control - any group can exhibit aggression, the way toys were placed in the experimental room.
Standardisation - length any group saw model, standardised model behaviour
(strengths and weaknesses in textbook)
Weakness - snapshot study also

Further studies:
-models who are feared, high self esteemed, neutral figures