Reading 12 : See Aggression Do Agression !

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Reading 12: SEE AGGRESSION…DO AGRESSION! Bandura, A., Ross, D., & Ross, S.A. (1961). Transmission of aggression through imitation of aggressive models. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 63, 575-582. One of the most researched topics in the history of psychology is aggression. One goal of social scientists has been to define aggression. Some believe that aggression is biologically preprogrammed, others look toward situational factors and this study suggests that aggression is learned. This study was conducted by Albert Bandura and his associates in 1961 at Stanford University. The researchers proposed that the children be exposed to adult models with either aggressive or nonaggressive ways, they would then be tested without the models present to determine if they would imitate that aggression they observed in the adult. The participants in this study included a total of 36 boys and 36 girls ranging in age from 3 years to almost 6 years. The average age of the children was 4 years, and 4 months. The control group consisted of 24 children, who would not be exposed to any model. The rest of the 48 children were divided into two groups: one group was exposed to aggressive models and the other group was exposed to nonaggressive models. These groups were then divided again into males and females. They were then further divided so that half of the children were exposed to same-sex models and opposite-sex models. (Leaving 8 experimental groups and 1 control group.) The children were brought to a playroom, where the experimenter invited the adult model to join in the game. The child was in one corner with interesting activities, while the adult model was in another corner containing a tinker-toy set, a mallet and an inflated 5 f... ... middle of paper ... ... story. With the adults there were a total of three photographs that they had to choose from, but for the children there were only two photographs to choose from. There was a total of 40 photographs that were used of 24 different people, including men, women, boys and girls. There were translators who received careful training to ensure that they would not influence the participants. They were taught how to translate the stories exactly the same way each time, and were told not to elaborate or embellish them. The emotions that were tested were happiness, sadness, anger, surprise, disgust and fear. While analyzing the results, researchers wanted to determine if any responses between men, women and the children were different. The adult women tended to be more hesitant when participating and had experienced less eye contact with the Westerner than men did. There were

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