Bandura
Albert Bandura and the Bobo Effect
Few research psychologists have been as directly and as singularly influential in shaping the way we think about learning and behavior as Albert Bandura, and few single experiments have been as significant and noteworthy as the Bobo experiment he conducted with his colleagues in 1961. Through this experiment and through his entire body of theoretical and research-based work, Bandura was able to demonstrate that traits like aggression and other features of human behavior are learned by example and social conditioning, which was an important breakthrough in overall psychological understanding. The following paragraphs present a brief overview of Bandura's life and his most famous experiment, situating his immense contributions in an understanding of the man himself.
Albert Bandura: A Brief Biography
Born in the tiny town of Mundare in Alberta, Canada in December of 1925, Albert Bandura is of Polish descent on his father's side and Ukrainian on his mother's. Both of his parents had emigrated from their native countries as adolescents, and they and their family grew up with very little in the way of luxury or resources for things like education. Still, Bandura's parents encouraged him to experience as much as he could of the world outside Mundare, and during one summer off from high school...
Taking a course in psychology as a "filler" course was to have a profound effect on Bandura's life and on psychology (Pajares, 2004).
Graduate studies at the University of Iowa completed Bandura's formal degree-conferring education, and in 1953 Bandura accepted what was initially a one year contract as a simple instructor at Stanford, but this quickly turned into a three-year assistant professorship and then a full and permanent professorship. It was at Stanford that Bandura developed his theories and carried out almost all of his experiments, including the famed Bobo experiment already mentioned and discussed in greater detail below. Primarily concerned with learning and development, Bandura has made significant contributions to the understanding of aggression, self-efficacy, social learning theory, social cognitive theory, moral agency, and more. Still heralded as one of the greatest psychologists living and indeed one of the most influential psychologists bar none, Bandura's legacy is truly larger than life (Pajares, 2004).
The Bobo Experiment
Despite the funny-sounding name of the experiment, the elements of learning and behavior Bandura demonstrated in…
References
ER. (2012). Bobo Doll Experiment. Accessed 4 April 2012. http://www.experiment-resources.com/bobo-doll-experiment.html
Pajares, F. (2004). Albert Bandura. Accessed 4 April 2012. http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/bandurabio.html
Albert Bandura is renowned as the main motivator behind social learning for his introduction of the social cognitive theory. Even though he restricted his approach to the behavioral tradition, Bandura was mainly concerned with the influence of cognitive factors on development. Similar to other behaviorists, Bandura believes that cognitive development is not the only way for explaining changes in childhood behavior. Moreover, Bandura also believed that learning processes are basically
Self-Regulation Bandura understands that the development of self is influenced by the environment but that the individual also has significant responsibility of determinism that makes the individual responsible for his or her behaviors. According to Boeree self-regulation is absolutely essential to behavior control and provides the backbone of human personality. Boeree describes the three steps that Bandura suggests that contribute to self-regulation; self-observation, or the process of observing our own behavior
This behavior was observed in more than eighty eight percent of the children. In order to show that learned behavior is not necessarily short-term, when the children were reintroduced to Bobo a few months later, 40% showed the violent behavior. In assessing whether watching excessive violence on television causes long terms aggressive behavior, research studies should be more comprehensive. They should take into account factors such as chemical or neurological
Violence is not just programmed and imitated, it is also chosen and controlled by the participant in a complex continuum of stimulus, response and participant interaction via other factors (Hoffman, 2007, 9). Abstract In an article by Stefan G. Hofmann entitled Cognitive Factors that Maintain Social Anxiety Disorder, it discusses the effects of social cognitive theory on social anxiety disorder (SAD). Recent studies have identified multiple psychological factors that could explain
dominant models of human behavior by the late 1950s and early 1960s were based on Neo-Freudian models and B.F. Skinner's brand of operant behaviorism. However, there were theorists that rejected the mechanistic views of behaviorism and Freudian instinct-drive-based models. Perhaps the most influential of these theorists was Albert Bandura. Bandura had received his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa and had been exposed to the work of Robert Spears
It is fairly clear that there was learning going on when the children observed aggressive behavior, but leaping immediately to the conclusion that what was learned was aggression, and not the specific behaviors exhibited by the adult models and repeated by the children, seems at least a little presumptive. If it can be assumed that the children in the experiment had never witnessed the specific behaviors of the models