#bobodoll

Image: (IB Psychology, 2013)

In 1961, a behavioral experiment was conducted on a group of small children ranging from 3-6 years old.  The purpose of this experiment was to test and observe whether certain behaviors were learned through social imitation and copying rather than inherited through genetic factors.  There has always been a debate on how influential children are to their surroundings and how each child’s social climate can affect their personality and morality.

72 children participated, unknowingly in this study, which had them broken down in equal parts to a “control” group of 24 children who sat and played in a room by themselves, 24 children who sat and played in a room accompanied by an adult who they were not to have interaction with, but who also played silently and passively with toys, and finally the last group of 24, who sat and played in a room with an adult playing on the other side who was combative and angry towards the toys.  An experimental method was chosen for this study, which is usually a very hard study to do, but since children were used, who often don’t have as much social conditioning and have less teaching and instruction on the rules of society than their adult counterparts, the study was successful.  “Experimental methods seek to alter the social landscape in a very specific way for a given sample of individuals and then track what results that change yields; often involve comparisons to a control group that did not experience such an intervention.” (Conley, 2015 p.68).

The children in the third group specifically witnessed the adult hitting a “Bobo Doll” (a toy that’s about 5-feet tall, and designed to spring back up when knocked down) with a toy mallet, sometimes for as long as 10 minutes.  The children were not allowed to interact with the adult or intervene.  All 72 children were then put into a room by themselves with similar toys, but specifically, a Bobo Doll, and then observed.  The hypothesis was that the children witnessing the violent adult would recreate what they saw and take the mallet to the doll.  It was also expected that boys would be more apt to this behavior than girls.  In the end, yes, the children that witnessed the aggressive behavior almost always exhibited the same behavior towards the doll, with the boys acting out most of the time.  This study proved that while genetic factors do come into play, that the social factors and the role of influence on small children play an even bigger role.

As each year passes, the “social climate” that our children are immersed in grows larger and larger.  With the addition of computers and video games to a society already dominated by television, billboards, music, coupled with the ever-diminishing parent influence on a child, it’s fascinating and sobering to see just how impressionable our children are to the often-unchecked outside world.  We all have a responsibility towards the children to show as much control and compassion as we can muster while they are under our influence.

Conley, D. (2015). You may ask yourself: An introduction to thinking like a sociologist. New York, NY, United States: W. W. Norton & Company

IB Psychology (2013, May 26)  Outcome answers, summaries and evaluations of experiments pertaining to the International Baccalaureate Psychology (SL) syllabus. Blog run by 2014 International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme graduate. Retrieved November 29, 2017 from: http://ib-psych.blogspot.com/2013/05/sla-all-about-bobo-dolls-albert-bandura.html

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The Social Learning Theory, or also known as Observational Learning (or Modeling),  is “the theory that we learn social behavior (e.g., aggression) by observing others & imitating them.”  

(Source: Aronson, Wilson & Akert, SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY: The Heart and the Mind, © 1994)