In 1961, the Canadian psychologist Albert Bandura demonstrated, with an experiment that later became a cornerstone of social psychology, that children can learn complex behaviors, such as aggression, even just through the simple observation of such behaviors in adults. This was not at all obvious in an era (the 1960s) that was dominated by behaviorist theories (behaviorism), according to which all human behavior was learned through rewards and punishments. Bandura, however, observed that children often imitated adults’ gestures, attitudes or phrases without any obvious positive reinforcement. This hypothesis led to the Bobo doll experiment, from which the form of learning that we call today emerged social learning or social learning.
What Albert Bandura’s experiment proved
With the Bobo doll experiment, Bandura wanted to rigorously test whether preschool children, after observing an adult playing aggressively with a toy object, would imitate that same behavior. In 1961 he divided 72 preschool children (36 boys and 36 girls) from the Stanford University kindergarten into 3 groups:
- Experimental group: the children were exposed to the observation of aggressive behavior towards the inflatable Bobo doll by a collaborator, who acted as a reference adult. In this case the adult hit the puppet with a toy hammer, kicked him, or threw him in the air, accompanying these gestures with phrases such as: “Hit Bobo on the nose!” and “Pum, pum!”
- Comparison group: the children observed the adult playing peacefully with other play tools and showing disinterest towards Bobo.
- Control group: the children were immediately left free to play spontaneously with the objects made available and no preliminary observation phase of an adult reference model was foreseen.
Subsequently, the children of the experimental group and the comparison group were led into a room with different toys, including Bobo. The researchers recorded their behaviors, observing how much they imitated the actions and words of the adult model. The results were very clear: the children who had witnessed the aggressive model tended to reproduce physical and verbal behaviors similar to those of the adult.
Even the choice of games was not random, since they tended to prefer toy guns, hammers and other objects that allowed them to simulate violent actions, leaving aside neutral games such as constructions, soft toys, balls and toy cars. The comparison group and the control group, which had not received aggressive stimulation, did not show this type of behavior but played peacefully. The experiment clearly showed how observation alone could be sufficient to teach and, consequently, internalize aggressive behavior.
The imitation effect and the results
The Bobo doll experiment also observed a gender difference: boys tended to reproduce more aggressive physical behavior, while girls showed more verbal imitation. Furthermore, imitation was more evident when the young participant observed an adult of the same sex, confirming the importance of identification in the learning process: imitation. that is, it does not happen mechanically but is influenced by how much the subject recognizes or identifies himself in the model he observes. That is, we tend to imitate more those who we perceive as more similar to us, who we admire or who we consider authoritative and relevant.
Bandura continued over the years with a series of variations of the experiment, introducing new conditions. In some versions the adult role model was rewarded or punished for his aggression; in others, children watched the aggressive behavior only via video. The results confirmed that children not only observe and imitate, but also learn from the consequences of other people’s actions: if the violent model was punished, imitation decreased, but if it was rewarded, they tended to repeat aggressive behavior more. This concept, known as vicarious reinforcement, showed how the consequences of actions can influence the learning of a particular behavior.
Do we also learn from TV and video games?
The implications of Bandura’s experiment went far beyond the laboratory. In subsequent years, the psychologist himself underlined how the principles observed with the Bobo doll could also be extended to other contexts of indirect observation, such as television, cinema and, today, video games. If a child can learn aggressive behavior simply by watching an adult, what happens when the exposure involves television figures or virtual characters, often represented as successful or unpunished after violent actions?
Numerous subsequent studies have confirmed that repeated exposure to violent content in the media can increase children’s likelihood of engaging in aggressive behavior and considering violence as an acceptable means of resolving conflicts. Exposure to violence, therefore, remains an important risk factor and can also predispose to a lack of empathy and helping behavior towards others. However, as Bandura made clear several times, this is not an automatic or deterministic relationship: not all children who observe violence become violent. In fact, the effect depends on many factors:
- the degree of identification with the model (how much the child recognizes himself in the observed character);
- from the family and school context;
- the presence or absence of educational discussions on the episodes observed;
- from the set of real experiences that contribute to forming the child’s moral vision.
Bandura himself urged caution: his theory of social learning did not propose a dogma, but a trend. Observing aggressive behaviors, especially in the absence of discouraging consequences or associated with rewards, increases the likelihood that those behaviors will be imitated, but does not inevitably determine them. In this sense, the responsibility of adults in guiding the gaze of the little ones, helping them to understand and interpret what they see, becomes of fundamental importance.
