Bobo Doll Experiment - Variations of The 'Bobo Doll' Experiment

Variations of The 'Bobo Doll' Experiment

Due to numerous criticisms, Bandura replaced the ‘Bobo doll’ with a live clown. The young woman beat up a live clown in the video shown to preschool children and in turn when the children were led into another room where they found a live clown, they imitated the action in the video they had just watched.

Variation 1:

In Friedrich and Stein (1972)’s ‘The Mister Rogers’ study:

Procedures: A group of preschoolers watched Mister Rogers every weekday for four consecutive weeks.

Result: Children from lower socioeconomic communities were easier to handle and more open about their feelings.

Variation 2:

Loye, Gorney & Steele (1977) conducted variation of the ‘Bobo Doll’ Experiment using 183 married males aged between 20 to 70 years old.

Procedure: The participants were to watch one of five TV programs for 20 hours over a period of one week while their wives secretly observed and recorded their behavior; helpful vs. hurtful behaviors when not watching the program.

Result: Participants of violent programs showed significant increase in aggressive moods and “hurtful behavior” while participants who viewed pro-social programs were more passive and demonstrated a significant increase of “emotional arousal”.

Variation 3:

Black and Bevan’s research (1992) had movie-goers fill out an aggression questionnaire either before they entered the cinema and after the film; a violent film and a romantic film.

Procedure: Subjects were randomly selected as they went to view violent and romantic film. They were asked to fill out pretest and posttest questionnaires on their emotional state.

Result: Those who watched violent films were already aggressive before viewing the film but it was aggravated after the viewing while there was no change in those who viewed romantic films.

Variation 4:

Anderson & Dill (2000) randomly assigned college students to play two games; Wolfenstein, a science fiction first-person shooter game and Tetris. Results of this study were inconsistent, and this study has sometimes been criticized for using poorly validated aggression measures, and exaggerating the consistency of its findings (Ferguson, 2009).

Variation 5:

Bartholow and Anderson (2009), examined how playing violent video games affect levels of aggression in a laboratory.

Procedure: A total of 22 men and 21 women were randomly assigned to play either a violent or non-violent video game for ten minutes. Then competed in a reaction time task . Punishment level set by opponents measured aggression.

Results: The results supported the researchers hypothesis that playing the violent video game would result in more aggression than the non-violent game. In addition, results also pointed to a potential difference in aggressive style between men and women.