Albert Bandura

• By: Luis Diego Ortez

Early Life

• Born December 4, 1925 in a small town of Mundare in northern Alberta, Canada.

• Mostly immigrants from Poland Ukraine lived in this town

• Youngest child and only boy of the six children of Eastern European descent.

• His father was from Poland and worked in the trans-Canada railroad and his mother came from Ukraine and worked in the town’s general store.

• They did not have a good education but his father taught himself how to speak Polish, Russian and German

• They saved enough money to buy a homestead and with their own hands change it to a farm.

Education

• Elementary’s and High School years were spent at the only school in town.

• Didn’t have many teachers so they left the initiative of their education to their students.

• Two teachers handled the entire high school curriculum.

• “The students had to take charge of their own education” Bandura once said

• During summer he was encouraged by his parents to search for boundaries outside their farm.

• Once he worked in a furniture manufacturing plant in Edmonton

• This experience supported him through college which he sometimes worked as a carpenter

• After his high school graduation he went to the University of British Columbia in which Bandura’s career came by chance.

• "One morning, I was wasting time in the library. Someone had forgotten to return a course catalog and I thumbed through it attempting to find a filler course to occupy the early time slot. I noticed a course in psychology that would serve as excellent filler. It sparked my interest and I found my career."

• After graduating, Bandura went to the Univeristy of Iowa to study in the department of psychology

• Bandura learned to play golf which at the end led to an important part of his life.

Wedding• One Sunday he was late to

the golf course with his friend and they bumped with two attractive women in a sand trap.

• One of this woman is called Virginia Varns who was studying on the teaching staff of the College of Nursing.

• They married in 1952 and became the parents to two daughters, Mary, who was born in 1954 and Carol born in 1958.

Bobo Doll Experiment

• This experiment was done in 1961 to try to prove Bandura’s belief that all human behavior was learned through social imitation rather than inherited by genetic factors.

• It was done to prove that in this case children would copy an adult’s behavior.

• By using aggresive and non-aggresive factors he wanted to prove that a child would tend to copy tha action and behavior of an adult.

• Children were chosen for this experiment because they have less knowledge about social rules and conditioning of society.

• A bobo doll is an inflatable toy designed to spring back upright when knocked over.

Hypothesis and Predictions

• Bandura predicted that children witnessing an adult in an aggresive manner would likely replicate his actions even if the adult was not present.

• Children who had witnessed a non-aggresive adult would show little violence.

• Believed that children would copy the behavior of a model of their same sex.

• With this he wanted to show that children identified themselves easier with their same gender.

• Last but not least, male children would react more violent than female children because men in society are more aggresive than women.

Setting the Experiment

• Selected children from the nursing school in Stanford University from a range of 3 to 6 years, with the average being 4 years and 4 months

• Picked 36 subjects of each sex to test gender aggresion

• The control group that would not see an adult model at all was made up of 12 boys and 12 girls.

• The second group which would be exposed to an adult showing aggresive tendencies was made up of 24 children of either sex.

• Both of the resulting groups of 12 were divided

• Half would be tested with a female role model and the other half with a male role model

• The third group was arranged the same way but they were exposed to a passive adult.

• They already knew which kids were more aggresive than others so this also helped them divide the children.

• Each of them were tested individually so they won’t affect the reactions of the others.

• The child was taken into a room and sat in a corner with some toys which they weren’t allowed to play with.

• For the children in group two the adult would begin to physically and verbally attack the doll for a period of 10 minutes.

• In the third group the adult would sit quietly and peacefully played with the toys for ten minutes

• The control group sat 10 minutes in the room with no adult present

• Then they were taken to another room in which there were interesting toys which they were prohibited to play with.

• They told them that the toys were reserved for another kid so their frustration would grow

• Then they were taken to another room with aggresive and non-aggresive toys and they were wacthed through a one way mirror.

Results

• Children who were exposed to the aggresive model were more likely to imitate the aggresive behavior.

• Boys were nearly three times more aggresive than girls

• The levels of verbal aggresion were mostly seen to the subjects presented with violent role models

• Children exposed to the non-aggresive model or no model, showed little imitative aggresive behavior.

• Male subjects exposed to non-aggresive models were less likely to use the mallet to hit the Bobo Doll. Male subjects placed with non-aggresive female models were more likely to use the mallet than the control group.

Video

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdh7MngntnI

Bibliography

• http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/bandura.html• http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Bandura/bobo.htm• http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/bandurabio.html• http://www.experiment-resources.com/bobo-doll-

experiment.html• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vdh7MngntnI• http://www.criminology.fsu.edu/crimtheory/bandura.htm• http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/

p/bio_bandura.htm• http://www.learning-theories.com/social-learning-theory-

bandura.html