The famous "Bobo Doll Experiment" refers to a series of experiments that Albert Bandura performed when testing his Social Learning Theory. Albert Bandura is a cognitive psychologist who believed that much of learning, particularly for children, happens by imitating those around, by a theory that he coined the "Social Learning Theory". In this series of experiments, a child is brought into a room with a doll. Prior to entering the room, the control group is shown no video, whereas the experimental group is shown a video of someone treating the doll violently. When entering the room, the children part of the experimental group treated the doll with aggressive actions. This raised a lot of questions, including: can aggressiveness be learned from the environment? Particularly, in today’s society of technological advancement with more and more children exposed to video games, this series of experiments is often used as “evidence” to show that video games have a negative impact on people’s lives, but is that really the case?
When discussing the effect of video games on individuals, most tend to fall to one end of the extremes on the spectrum, not in the severity of playing video games, but in its effect, most people seem to either believe it is “good” or “bad”, with no in-between, or grey area. However, many fail to take into consideration the initial goal of conducting this experiment — mimicry of children of those around them. When keeping that in mind, the grand scheme of video games is inevitably broken into different categories, and when narrowing down, the category at concern is probably “violent video games”.
There are typically two perspectives of these types of video games: 1) first-person’s POV, and 2) third-person’s POV. In first-person’s POV, it does not relate to learning from others’ behavior, as the player puts themselves in the character’s position, which is not related to the Social Learning Theory. Therefore, the spectrum can be narrowed down further to third-person’s POV violent video games.
At first glance, these games seem to match all the criteria for the Social Learning Theory. Individuals are exposed to violent/aggressive acts. There has also been research that shows that children exposed to these do in fact display a tendency to be more aggressive. However, the aims of video games should also be kept in mind for the sake of a fair judgment. Most video games that contain sensitive content are usually rated for a certain age. In the case of that, if the target audience of these video games are adults, does the “evidence” still apply?
Albert Bandura centered his Social Learning Theory around the mechanisms of learning for children, so the group “adults” does not fall under the category at all. Children, due to their lack of experience, mimic adults, particularly those who they trust, as they believe the actions will bring them to success. Adults on the other hand, with experience, are less easily swayed by the actions of those around them. It is important to note that studies have established future violent tendencies and the exposure to these video games in children to be a correlational relationship, not a cause-and-effect relationship. There could be certain underlying factors that caused this correlation, such as genetic predisposition. For example, children who are naturally easily aggressive may show more interest towards this particular type of gaming than others. They could also be brought up in an environment which enabled them to feel more interest and normalize certain actions in the game. Moreover, if the target audience is not aimed towards children, it is debatable whether video games are to blame for the children’s future aggressive tendencies or the adults that granted them access to the material they should otherwise be inhibited to.
All in all, this debate can be looked at from multiple different perspectives, and when the spectrum of view narrows and details are observed, it becomes fairly obvious that there are other factors contributing to a child’s future aggressive tendencies, not to mention the relationship established is merely correlational. With the goals of both video games and the Bobo Doll experiment not targeted towards the debated issue, it still remains unclear the rights and wrongs.
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Written by: Erin Zhang
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References:
Kurt, Serhat.“Social Learning Theory: Albert Bandura”. (January 6, 2020). Educational Technology. Retrieved from: https://educationaltechnology.net/social-learning-theory-albert-bandura/#:~:text=Bandura%20is%20known%20for%20his,observation%2C%20imitation%2C%20and%20modeling.
McLeod, Saul. “Albert Bandura's Social Learning Theory”. (2016). Simply Psychology. Retrieved from: https://www.simplypsychology.org/bandura.html.
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