Bobo doll experiment

The Bobo doll experiment was conducted by Albert Bandura in 1961 and studied patterns of behaviour associated with aggression. Additional studies of this type were conducted by Bandura in 1963 and 1965. A Bobo doll is an inflatable toy that is approximately the same size as a prepubescent child.

Aim
Bandura carried out this study to look at social learning, where people learn through imitation. He used children, because they generally have no social conditioning. Bandura wanted to observe children's responses to seeing a television presentation of an aggressive model who is seen either to be punished, rewarded or to have no consequences for the behaviour, and to see how many of the novel aggressive responses the child will imitate when induced by rewards to do so.

Procedure
The experiment created three groups of children: a group whose members observed an adult abusing a Bobo doll, a group whose members observed an adult ignoring a Bobo doll, and a group whose members did not observe any interaction between an adult and a Bobo doll. After being forbidden to play with any toys for a time, the children were then taken to a room where they were allowed to play with a Bobo doll and other toys. Bandura and his team observed as the children played with the toys.

Findings
Children who saw an adult displaying aggressive behaviour towards a Bobo doll performed significantly more imitative aggressive acts towards the doll than the other two groups of children. Comparatively, the group of children who observed an adult ignoring a Bobo doll showed the least aggressive responses out of the three groups.

Conclusions
This study showed that aggression can be learned through imitation of models. However, it also demonstrated that non-aggressive tendencies can also be learned in a similar manner.

1963 experiment
The 1963 experiment mentioned above found that observing aggressive behaviour via video playback is less influential on a subject than is observing the same aggressive act in person.