The Bobo Doll Experiments

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In psychology, behaviorism is an approach that assumes all behaviors are responses to certain environmental stimuli. It is based on the knowledge that reinforcing a behavior encourages it while punishing it diminishes it.

From 1961 to 1963, psychologist Albert Bandura conducted a series of experiments now known as the Bobo Doll Experiments. These experiments challenged behaviorists, to an extent, in asserting that behaviors can be learned through imitation. More specifically, the central question was: Are aggression and violence learned behaviors?

The experiment was simple: young boys and girls would be selected and then separated into control, aggressive, and non-aggressive groups.
The children in the aggressive group would observe an adult model verbally and physically harass a bobo doll. In contrast, the children in the non-aggressive group would see the adult model playing with the doll.

The children were then left seemingly alone and allowed to interact with the bobo doll themselves; their behavior was observed.

Additionally, Bandura would test this experiment two years later, with the adults being rewarded or punished for their aggressive behavior toward the doll.

Bandura made a series of predictions as to how the experiments would turn out:

Children who observed aggressive adults would be more likely to be aggressive in their absence.

From most to least aggressive groups, the aggressive, control, and non-aggressive models would be used.

Children would be more likely to imitate adults of the same sex.
Boys would turn out to be more aggressive than girls.

The main experiment’s subjects were 36 boys and 36 girls selected from Stanford University Nursery School; their average age was four years and four months.

Each group consisted of 24 children—12 boys and 12 girls. The groups were further separated, with six children of each sex exposed to a model of the same sex while the other six were exposed to a model of a different sex.
After being individually tested, the children were exposed to the bobo doll and a combination of aggressive and non-aggressive toys. The results were as follows:

Boys imitated same-sex models more often than girls.

Girls with male models were more physically aggressive, while girls with female models were more verbally aggressive — though girls overall tended to be more aggressive verbally than physically.

Children with a violent model were likely to imitate the exact behavior they observed.

Boys who observed a different-sex model behave non-aggressively were more likely to exhibit violent behaviors than boys in the control group.

Boys who observed male models act violently were more likely to exhibit violent behaviors than those who watched female models act violently.

In line with Bandura’s prediction, boys were indeed confirmed to show more aggressive behaviors than girls. Overall, 270 instances of aggression were observed in boys compared to 128 in girls.

In his follow-up study, Bandura concluded that children who saw the adult models being rewarded for their violence were more likely to show violent behaviors themselves. In contrast, those who observed the models being punished for aggression were less likely to show aggression.

Although the experiments seem conclusive, there are some well-founded criticisms of them. Those include:

Children were chosen from a narrow pool, being somewhat similar in their racial and socioeconomic backgrounds — selection bias.

The results were collected immediately, making it difficult to analyze long-term effects.

Non-human doll — acting violently with a toy is different from acting violently toward a human.

What can be learned from this is that although behaviorist ideals certainly did affect the experiments (when children saw models being rewarded/punished for violence), it is still arguable that the children could pick up a behavior through observation alone.

Sources:
Bandura and Bobo - Association For Psychological Science
Behaviorism - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Bandura’s Bobo Doll Experiment On Social Learning - Simply Psychology
Bobo Doll Experiment - Explorable

Editing by Myles Adoh-Phillips
Written by Lucas L