Amir Isap Section B – Bandura 1 October 2010

G542: Section B – Bandura

a) One of the hypotheses in Banduras study included “Boys will be more
asses likely to imitate aggression than weird girls.”

b) Data was gathered in two ways for this study; qualitative and quantitative.

i. Quantitative data is data that consists of numbers and figures, it

is easy to analyse and provides objective viewpoints of a piece of data, an
example of this data is the number of aggressive acts recorded in ‘Room
3’ by the observer (males had an average of 25.8 aggressive acts and
females had an average of 5.8 acts of aggression). The problem with
quantitative data is that it lacks intuition and insight about why the results
were found to have more aggressive males.

ii. Qualitative data is data that consist of written notations and it

provides detailed and concise explanations that provide insight into the
results, an example of qualitative data that was collected in Bandura is the
verbal remarks recorded from the children (“POW!”, “He’s a good
fighter...”). Qualitative data also has drawbacks as it is subjective thus
making it open for debate.

c) Strength to quantitative data is that it is easy to analyse, it is non-

subjective and it is easy to manipulate in terms of graphs, charts and
diagrams. If we use the data from Banduras study, we find that the males
who had an average of 25.8 aggressive acts are clearly the more
aggressive in comparison to the females who only had an average of 5.8
aggressive acts. We can clearly see the facts and we can even use them,
but what we can’t do is understand why the results have been found and
possibly have more depth of the feelings of the children; this is a massive
drawback for quantitative data as it lacks a certain amount of insight and
evidence for the study.

d) There were many ethical issues in Banduras study, two of them are:

i. The protection of participants – this is where the researchers must

not cause physical or mental harm to the participants, this is usually
amended through a debriefing as the researchers can look for
mental scarring and provide support such as one to one sessions
with the children, but there is no evidence that Bandura debriefed
them therefore many of the children who were exposed to
aggression may be affected in their morals as well as their
understanding of aggression. This ethical issue is flawed due to the
fact that mental harm may have been caused. Although Bandura
may have not wanted to do it due to the amount of time that would
be consumed in the aid of seventy-two children.

ii. The right to withdraw – before the research begins the

participants should be informed that they have the right to leave at
Amir Isap Section B – Bandura 1 October 2010

anytime (even after the experiment) and that if they do withdraw

their data must be destroyed. In Banduras study the children were
caused distress in ‘Room 2’, this was when the children were
stopped from playing with the attractive toys such as the fire
engine, and where told to go and play with other toys in ‘Room 3’,
due to the distress and anguish caused, the children may have
wanted to leave the experiment. This also links with consent, had
the children been informed in the first place then there would be no
issue in having to tell the children they may leave.

e) The results found in Banduras study were quite strongly related to the
hypotheses of this study.

a. The first result found was that children who observed the
aggressive models made more imitative aggressive acts than those
in the non aggressive or control groups. Also his study found that
males showed an average of 25.8 physically aggressive acts when
seeing a male model act aggressively whereas only an average of
1.5 showed physical aggression when seeing a non aggressive
model. This shows that a child will observe and imitate aggression
in a different atmosphere and setting.

b. There were also non imitative actions recorded from the children in
the aggressive condition (males had an average of 36.7 acts when
viewing an aggressive male model) compared with those in the non
aggressive group (22.3 acts of aggression). The children also use
their imagination in thinking of aggression as well as using imitative
aggression. This is a problem as this does not prove the social
learning theory and has no relevance to the study.

c. Boys were more likely to imitate same-sex models than girls (males
imitated 25.8 aggressive acts and females only copied 5.5
aggressive acts) this shows that the evidence of females imitating
female models was not strong. When the verbal comments were
recorded from males, they spoke about women displaying
aggression as abnormal, and males showing aggression as normal
and more appropriate.

d. Boys imitated more physically aggressive acts than girls. This is one
of the hypotheses made by Bandura at the start of the experiment.

The verbal aggression between girls and boys was quite similar; his
predictions made at the start of the experiment are quite accurate.

f) One of the main problems in the study was that Bandura did not debrief
the children regarding the study. It is essential to do this as the children
may leave the experiment with psychological stress and may even
develop aggressive personalities further in life. To amend this problem the
Amir Isap Section B – Bandura 1 October 2010

researchers should have debriefed the children at the end of the study, by
sitting them in one room and explaining to them along with their parents
what has happened and what can be done. After explaining to the parents
it was only an experiment, they should address the children and explain to
them that aggression is wrong and they should outline the consequences
of aggression. Then finally they should heck that all the children are
mentally capable and have no issues, if some of the children are
traumatised or mentally stressed; the researchers should provide support
and assistance to the parents as well as the children. This may be difficult
as it would be time consuming to debrief and assess all seventy-two
children. This would affect the results in a positive way as it improves the
ethics of the study and there are less problems and negatives which other
experimenters and researchers can pick on.