Bandura carried out a lab experiment to see if children would imitate aggression modelled by adults. The first independent variable used was the modelled act of aggression which was standardised to include both verbal and physical acts on a Bobo doll. The second and third independent variables were the sex of the child and the sex of the model respectively. The dependent variable was the frequency of aggression actions, both verbal and physical, observed by the researchers. Thirty-six boys and thirty-six girls, aged between three and six years participated in the study. The groups were matched for aggression. Children were either placed in a control group which did not see a model, played alongside a passive model, or witnessed an aggressive model. Children were allocated to either a female or male model. In the passive condition, the model played with blocks.  In the aggressive condition, the model was verbally and physically aggressive to the Bobo doll.

All children were then exposed to ‘mild aggression arousal’ by being taken to a room with toys; once they began to play were told that the toys were for other children. The researchers then observed the children’s response and looked for acts of aggression towards the Bobo doll. The researchers found that participants from the passive-model control showed fewer aggressive behaviours than those in the aggressive-model conditions. Second, boys made more aggressive acts than girls. Third, boys made more physical acts of aggression whereas girls made the most verbal acts.  Finally, both boys and girls who had a male model made more aggressive acts than children that observed a female one.

Bandura et al is an important study used to back up SCT because it demonstrates how humans learn from observation and then replicate it. It also shows that the children did not identify with the aggressive female model as much as the male model. Since it is an experiment, it can be replicated to determine its reliability. However, the study suffers from low ecological validity and can be criticized for being highly controlled and artificial. One example of this is the use of Bobo dolls in the experiment. Physical and verbal aggression towards inanimate objects may not be able to be equated with aggression towards humans. Further research would be required to determine whether children would imitate physical and verbal acts of aggression against other people in the same way they did in the study against the Bobo dolls. The ethics of the study are also questionable as it was not clear whether this learned behaviour would continue after the experiment.

In Joy, Kimball and Zabrack researchers performed a prospective natural experiment investigating whether the introduction of television in a northern Canadian town would affect the aggression of children. The study found a significant increase in verbal and physical acts of aggression in the children. The SCT can explain the results of the study by suggesting that the children identified with the characters in the shows and imitated their behaviour. However, this may not have been the case. As the study is not highly controlled, it is possible that other variables could have played a role in the change of behaviour. Unlike Bandura et al, this study has high ecological validity in that it was a natural experiment. Using the two studies together is effective because they both support SCT while making up for limitations that exist in each.

SCT is an important theory in the sociocultural approach because of its high heuristic validity and its explanatory power. As Bandura et al indicates, the theory can be used to explain aggression. It can also be applied to change behaviours – such as exercise, eating habits and attitudes toward domestic violence. The theory is testable, with many studies having been done to support it. This has led to a large amount of empirical evidence which gives SCT credibility.  The theory assumes that attention, retention and identification - as well as self-efficacy- are important in learning, but these variables are difficult to measure in a natural setting. In addition, it is also difficult to measure learning as there is often a time gap between observing a behaviour and actually imitating it.  When a person does not display a behaviour, that does not necessarily mean they have not learned it.

In conclusion, research done on Social Cognitive Theory appears to explain aggressive behaviour in children.  The theory has been successfully tested in both controlled and naturalistic conditions.  The wide range of applications shows that the theory is very useful; however, it is a complex theory and it is not clear that all of the factors that Bandura described can be easily measured.

980 words