Bandura's Bobo doll experiment and television violence on children

¶ … Dr. Bandura is the classic and innovative Bobo doll experiment from 1961. Inspired by his work, Victor C. Strasburger spoke about this and much of Bandura's other influential work in an article entitled "Risky Business: What Primary Care Practitioners Need to Know About the Influence of the Media on Adolescents." Albert Bandura created a holistic framework for social cognitive theory which takes into consideration the interaction between personal, environmental and behavioral variables. Although he affected many areas of psychological study, he has continued to affect the development of social cognitive theory with regard to children and television violence. Indeed, without his pioneering work, it is hard to see how social cognitive behavior theory as we know it would have developed, or at the very least it would have been radically different and might not have explained the convergence of television with social cognitive theory.

Bandural Experiment Results

Much of this work is related to but not exclusively centers around the famous Bobo doll experiment that Bandura performed in 1961. This was some of the earliest work on television behaviors. In the experiment, the participants were either rewarded, punished, or received no consequences for the aggressive behaviors. In fact, as the authors point out matter of factly, applied behavior analysis began as an extension of laboratory-anchored principles in an effort to understand and control socially significant human behavior. While Bandura and B.F. Skinner differed on the number of influences on their social cognitive model, Skinner predicted the above extension. Therefore, while Bandura's emphasis is different, it is a natural extension of Skinner's work. The children imitated work that they had seen on a television screen (Straburger and Wilson, 2003, 5).

Abstract

The debate about television violence has been ongoing for five decades. Studies like the Bobo doll experiment were in direct response to the hearings by Senator Estes Kefauver's Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency that suggested that television was contributing to youth violence. When question, network executives have claimed that the available, however the research that was started in 1961 with the Albert Bandura Bobo doll experiment. The fact that the research was specifically geared toward television and respondent violence research set the paradigm for this type of investigative research since 1961. This definitively connects violence seen on television and imitative behavior that children model after they have viewed the violent programming on television. The television executives are therefore being much less than honest, especially when confronted with Bandura's evidence which shows such a close relationship, especially when incentives against violence have been removed from the children in the experiment framework.

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 the maintenance of the disorder. The model that is constructed in the article makes the assumption that social apprehension is to be associated with unrealistic social standards. This also includes a deficiency in the selection of attainable social goals. When a person is confronted with challenging social situations, people with SAD shift their attention toward the anxiety. They view themselves negatively as a social object. In addition, they overestimate the negative consequences of a social encounter, believing that they have little control over their emotional responses and also view their social skills as not adequate to cope effectively with the social situation. In order to avoid the above situation, the individuals with SAD find themselves reverting to coping strategies that are maladaptive. These include avoidance and safety behaviors, followed on by post event rumination. This further leads to future social apprehension. Possible disorder-specific intervention strategies are considered in the article.

Fountain, Finley, & Finley Article

Social learning theory claims that individual clients learn about other people or groups by internalizing outside information and cues. This idea was first proposed by Albert Bandura and Richard Walters in 1963. This theory suggests that viewers, particularly children, usually model behavior that they see on television or in films. In particular, movies provide models for how we are supposed to behave. Ironically, the least active couch potatoes can later become the most aggressive of all people. Later versions of this theory have brought in more cognitive elements. This suggests that the violent corporate media may present scripts or schemes that will shape the strategies that people will employ when they solve their various problems.

Lab research has even further shown that when people who are already angry view violent images, the signals in that media could trigger aggressive behavior in these people. For example, if someone was angry at his or her spouse when they viewed aggressive behavior perpetrated by an athlete in a sport film or televised sporting event, that person would probably be more inclined to act out in anger against someone else. The experiment participants were consumers of this type of media and most often adopted the behaviors or attitudes modeled in the media by aggressive programming (Fountain, Finley, & Finley, 2009).

Abstract

In the article on the social learning theory of Bandura and Walters and their successors, the psychological process is explained by which humans acquire behaviors through the observation of their external environments. This provides a useful method for studying communication within a family. The authors paint a very clear picture that social learning theory is heavily dependent upon the work of Albert Bandura regarding aggression and its relationship with other cognitive factors. Bandura built upon Skinner's work, but he included other things that affected cognitive behavior other than direct external stimuli. As in the Hofmann article, Bandura has diverged from Skinner considerably as his work has been criticized, moving more and more away from Skinner's dependence upon explaining cognitive social behavior as being the sum total of direct external stimuli and the patient responses to them. More recent formulations by Howard & Hollander have involved the study of communication, formulations that also recognized "the role of other people as the agents of reinforcement (ibid, 45)."