Bandura (1963) Film-mediated aggressive models

• Aim of Bandura's study (1963)

  To investigate  if children would become more aggressive if exposed to an aggressive role model seen in a film or in a less realistic cartoon compared to watching a real life model.
• Sample of Bandura's study (1963)

  48 boys and 48 girls at Stanford University Nursery School, aged between 3 and 6 years
• Procedure of Bandura (1963)

  • One female experimenter.
  • Male and female models.
  • 3 x experimental groups and 1 x control group*
  • Behaviour was recorded by a one-way mirror, by two observers

  ‘real-aggression’ group – watched an aggressive human model, this room had 

  ‘Filmed-aggression’ group – Watched the same model but a filmed version

  ‘Aggressive cartoon character ‘group – watched a cartoon character being aggressive.
• Findings of Bandura (1963)

  • All three aggression groups differed significantly (using Wilcoxon test) from the control group.
  • There was no significant difference between watching the ‘real-life’ model or the ‘human-film’ model.
• Conclusions of Bandura (1963)

  • Observing filmed aggressive acts leads to aggression in children
  • Freud’s idea that watching aggression can be cathartic is not borne out in these findings
  • Watching aggression didn’t just lead to aggression, but to imitative acts, therefore researchers suggested that social behaviour might come from ‘pictorial’ media, particularly TV