So it's kind of
common sense that you should watch the
way you behave when you have little kids
in your presence because the concern is that
the little kids can pick up your bad behavior or
maybe learn a choice word or two that
they're not supposed to be using in preschool. The underlying
concern in this is that children can
observe your bad behavior and then learn
through observing it. And there's a psychologist
who studied this by the name of Albert Bandura. And this is actually a very
famous psychological experiment known as the Bobo
doll experiment. And the Bobo doll experiment
is a pretty famous psychological research
study that you hear cited sometimes when
people are having the debate of whether or not they should
ban violent video games. For those of you who
don't know, a Bobo doll is basically a blow-up
doll that you can punch. Now, I don't know if kids
still play with these things these days since
now they have Xboxes and all sorts of other
fancy technology. But this experiment
was back in 1965. And this is pretty much
the cream of the crop when it came to toys back then. So this is an inflatable doll
that people called Bobo doll because it has a clown on it. So the way the experiment
worked was they had a group of children
in a laboratory doing an
arts-and-crafts project. That sounds nice enough. Except, in the middle
of it, suddenly a man appeared and proceeded to
start punching and hitting and kicking this
inflatable doll. And not only was he being
aggressive physically towards this doll, he was
also shouting hit it, kick it. So he did this for
10 minutes straight, just pummeling this doll to
a bloody pulp, if you could say that about an inflatable
doll, all the while yelling hit it, kick it. And some of the children
observed this behavior. And other ones, it
didn't really phase them. They were just so into their
arts-and-crafts project that I guess it really
didn't matter much to them. So after the 10 minutes
passed, the man left. And the next part
of the experiment required the kids
to feel frustrated. So the researchers were
kind of mean about this. And what they did was they gave
these kids an impossible puzzle to solve. In other words, they
gave them a puzzle with some pieces missing. Imagine how
frustrating that must be, that you can't
put it together. So they knew that that
would cause frustration. And what they did
was the researchers observed through a
one-way mirror how the kids reacted to
this frustration. Now in this
laboratory, they were brought to a room where
it was filled with toys. So maybe here's a balloon,
here's a cool teddy bear. And of course in the
room was this Bobo doll, the very same one that that
man had beat up for 10 minutes. And what the
researchers observed was many of the children would
actually come up to the doll and proceed to hit it. And not only were a
lot of them hitting it, the ones that were hitting
it were often yelling hit it, kick it,
the very same words that that guy had said earlier. So what this revealed
was that kids can learn through observing
the way people behave. So as you might imagine,
oftentimes you'll hear this Bobo doll
experiment mentioned in the debate of
whether or not they should ban violent
video games or not let kids see violent movies
because this experiment showed that children can indeed learn
through observing behavior. But learning a behavior
and performing a behavior are two separate topics. Many of the kids were
aggressive towards the doll and yelled the same things
that the man had yelled. And so you could say, all right,
so the majority of kids, yes, were aggressive
towards the doll. But not all of the kids were
aggressive towards the doll. I mean all the kids didn't
learn this aggressive behavior. So Bandura wanted
to know, what's going on with these kids? How come they didn't behave
the same way towards the doll? Did they maybe not learn
that aggressive behavior? So they performed
another experiment that was fairly similar to
the one I just described. So in this next experiment,
what they did was they set up a TV
in a laboratory. And I don't know, I bet back
then TVs had bunny ears. So on this TV, the kids saw
a Bobo doll and someone being aggressive towards the Bobo
doll, also yelling hit it, kick it. But the difference here was
that the video showed afterwards that person being
punished for acting that way towards the doll. They were spanked and told they
were doing something wrong. So the children saw the
consequence of that behavior. So after they watched the video,
they were placed into a room again with toys. And some of the kids again
walked up to the Bobo doll and started hitting it. And not only were
they hitting it, they were also yelling
hit it, kick it. So these kids did that. But what about these kids? Did they not learn
that behavior? So what they did
to find that out was the researchers
basically bribed these kids and offered them
stickers and juice, you know, things kids love, if
they could imitate the behavior that they saw on TV. And what they found was
that the kids were indeed able to imitate that behavior. And this is a concept known
as learning-performance distinction. And what learning-performance
distinction is that learning a behavior
and performing the behavior are two different things. You can learn a behavior,
but not perform the behavior. But what's important
to take away from this is that not performing
the behavior doesn't necessarily mean you
didn't learn the behavior. So again, just because
these kids initially didn't perform the
behavior of acting aggressive towards this
Bobo doll, that doesn't mean that they didn't learn it
because it was clear once you bribe these kids with juice
and stickers and things that they like,
they were in fact able to perform that
aggressive behavior. So they actually did
learn, even though they didn't act that way. And again, this is
what's important when you think of that classic
debate of whether they should ban certain types of
violent video games. Because you'll
hear people who are against the censorship
saying, well, my child plays violent video games
and doesn't act aggressive. Or my child watches
violent movies and doesn't act the way
that those people do on TV. But that doesn't
necessarily mean that just because they're
not performing that behavior that they're
seeing, that doesn't mean they're not
learning that behavior. So it's a scary thought
to think about, right? And when it comes
to learning, Bandura devised his own theory, known
as Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory, talk about a mouthful. But it's pretty easy to
remember if you ask yourself, am I motivated? So say that with me. Am I motivated to learn
Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory? Are you motivated? Let's see. Let's write it out. Am I motivated? Well, I'm sure you are, if
you're watching this video. But really this is a
mnemonic that I came up with that might make it
easier for you to remember it. The A stands for attention. The M stands for memory. The I stands for imitation. And motivated stands
for motivation. So let's just remove these
two letters, motivation. So this is Bandura's
Social Cognitive Theory and the four components of it,
attention, memory, imitation, and motivation. So let's use an
example to illustrate what I'm talking about here. So let's say I want to teach
you how to draw a star. So here we go. I want you to learn this. Did you see me draw it? OK, so in order to learn how
to draw a star like I did-- of course, I don't
know why you wouldn't know how to draw it anyway. But let's say that you've never
seen this really interesting star before, OK? So you have to have an
attention span long enough to watch me go through the
movements of drawing the star. Not only do you have to
have the attention span, you have to have a memory to
remember me drawing the star. And what imitation
means is you have to be able to imitate
what I just did. So let's delete the star now. And if I were to ask you to draw
it or imitate the way that I drew it, that
would be imitation. And that would
involve your memory and having an attention
span long enough to do it. And then, of course, what it
comes down to is motivation. If you're going to
draw a star for me, you probably have the
attention span long enough to watch me go
through the movement. I'm sure your memory is good
enough to remember me doing it. So I'm sure you're capable of
imitating me drawing that star. But the question is are you
motivated enough to do that? So if you were, you would do-- And that's Bandura's
Social Cognitive Theory. So am I motivated? And if you just watched this
whole video, I'm sure you are.