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Priscilla Sung Sample Reading Commentary 9.7.14

Bandura and colleagues (1961) examined whether 3- to 5-year-olds could learn

aggressive behavior through merely observing adult models. This hypothesis ran counter to the

view, common at the time, that learning happened mainly through reward and punishment. The

72 children were split into three groups: the first group observed aggressive behavior toward a

Bobo doll; the second group observed nonaggressive behavior; and the control group did not

observe either type of behavior. Children were then allowed to play with the doll in a new

environment. Children in the aggressive condition demonstrated more aggressive behaviors than

children in the nonaggressive or control conditions. Boys imitated physical aggression more

than girls did, and children were generally more likely to imitate verbal aggression by a same-sex

model. These findings suggest that reward or punishment are not necessary for learning;

observation was sufficient for children to reproduce the aggressive behavior.

One weakness of this study is that its findings do not necessarily generalize to long-term

imitative learning. While there was a short delay between the exposure phase and test phase of

the experiment, the entire procedure took 20 minutes. There is no evidence that children in the

aggressive condition would retain these physical and verbally aggressive behaviors after the

procedure (e.g., after an hour, or a day). Moreover, children’s imitation of aggressive behavior

may have been context-specific: the environmental similarity between the test phase playroom

and the exposure phase playroom may have contributed to children’s tendency to imitate

aggressive behavior. Developmental research suggests that children’s behavior is highly

responsive to environmental context; while children may have readily imitated the adult model’s

aggressive behavior in the test phase playroom, this does not necessarily indicate that they would

act aggressively at home, at preschool, or in non-play contexts.

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