Bandura's Bobo Doll

[MUSIC PLAYING]

The segment you're about to see is taken from an early experiment on learning of aggressive styles of behavior through modeling. Children watched a filmed adult perform novel aggressive acts toward an inflated doll. And the physical aggression was accompanied by novel hostile remarks.

We later measured how much of this modeled aggression the children had learned just by watching. Now the measurement of learning of aggression uses simulated targets, rather than live ones. For example, to test how well bombardiers have learned bombing strategies, you would use simulated targets, rather than require them to bomb San Francisco or New York.

The model pummeled the doll with a mallet, flung it in the air, kicked it repeatedly, threw it down, and beat it. It was once widely believed that seeing others vent aggression would drain the viewer's aggressive drive. As you can see, exposure to aggressive modeling is hardly cathartic.

Exposure to aggressive modeling increased attraction to guns, even though it was never modeled. Guns had less appeal to children who had no exposure to the aggressive modeling. The children also picked up the novel hostile language.

The room contained varied play materials, and children could choose to play aggressively or non-aggressively. The children devised new ways of hitting the doll. Now the object of interest was the novel aggressive acts, not punching the doll.

The children in the control group who had no exposure to the aggressive modeling, never exhibited the novel forms of aggression. And here's a creative embellishment. A doll becomes a weapon of assault.