Psya3 Social Explanations of Aggression
Describe and Evaluate Two Social Psychological Theories of Aggression
One social psychological theory of aggression is based on the Social Learning Theory. It is the behavioural approach, which suggests that all behaviours, such as aggression are learnt, through observation and imitation, the theory suggests that there are various steps which need to take place in order for aggression to be learnt. First of all, attention needs to be paid to the aggressive behaviour, it is then important for the behaviour to be remembered and finally motivation. The person reproducing the aggressive behaviour has to have some sort of motivation to do so.
The social learning theory can especially be seen in the behaviour of children, who look to others, models, to see how they should behave. Bandura proved this theory in his Bobo doll experiment, in which children watched an adult display unique, violent ways of playing with the Bobo doll (this covered both the attention and motivation steps, as the children were not distracted from observing the aggressive actions and could have been motivated to imitate them due to the older model behaving in such a way). When left alone in a room full of the same toys, the children, observed through a one way mirror, would display similar behaviours to that of the models, even repeating some of the phrases used by the adults in the demonstration, such as ‘Sock him in the nose’. As this was a fairly unique phrase, unlikely to have been heard by the children before, this shows us that the children learnt these phrases directly from the models, whose behaviour they had merely observed, which proves the social learning theory, it also shows that Bandura managed to operationalise how much the children learnt from the models. As well as this, there was no gender bias in Bandura’s research as the models were both male and female, although it was found that children were more likely to imitate the male. This could however be due to the role of ‘the
One social psychological theory of aggression is based on the Social Learning Theory. It is the behavioural approach, which suggests that all behaviours, such as aggression are learnt, through observation and imitation, the theory suggests that there are various steps which need to take place in order for aggression to be learnt. First of all, attention needs to be paid to the aggressive behaviour, it is then important for the behaviour to be remembered and finally motivation. The person reproducing the aggressive behaviour has to have some sort of motivation to do so.
The social learning theory can especially be seen in the behaviour of children, who look to others, models, to see how they should behave. Bandura proved this theory in his Bobo doll experiment, in which children watched an adult display unique, violent ways of playing with the Bobo doll (this covered both the attention and motivation steps, as the children were not distracted from observing the aggressive actions and could have been motivated to imitate them due to the older model behaving in such a way). When left alone in a room full of the same toys, the children, observed through a one way mirror, would display similar behaviours to that of the models, even repeating some of the phrases used by the adults in the demonstration, such as ‘Sock him in the nose’. As this was a fairly unique phrase, unlikely to have been heard by the children before, this shows us that the children learnt these phrases directly from the models, whose behaviour they had merely observed, which proves the social learning theory, it also shows that Bandura managed to operationalise how much the children learnt from the models. As well as this, there was no gender bias in Bandura’s research as the models were both male and female, although it was found that children were more likely to imitate the male. This could however be due to the role of ‘the