Lecture Notes: Experiment on Learning Aggressive Behavior through Modeling

Overview

• A segment from an early experiment focused on how aggressive styles of behavior can be learned through modeling.
• Experiment involved children observing filmed adults behaving aggressively towards an inflatable doll.

Key Experiment Details

• Aggressive Acts Observed:
  • Physical aggression included:
    • Pummeling the doll with a mallet
    • Flung the doll into the air
    • Kicked repeatedly
    • Threw down and beat the doll
  • Accompanied by novel hostile remarks.
• Objective:
  • Measure how much aggression children learned simply by watching.

Measurement of Learning

• Learning of aggression was measured using simulated targets, similar to training bombardiers with simulated targets.

Findings

• Increased Aggression:
  • Increase in attraction to guns, although not modeled directly.
  • Children exposed to aggressive modeling showed more interest in guns compared to those not exposed.
• Language Acquisition:
  • Children adopted novel hostile language used by the model.
• Catharsis Theory:
  • Contrary to the belief that observing aggression drains aggressive drive, exposure actually increased aggression.

Environment

• The room where the experiment was conducted contained various play materials.