it was conducted by Albert Bandura in 1961 and studied patterns
of behaviour associated with aggression.
His experiment is important to psychology because it was a precedent that sparked many
more studies about the effects of viewing violence on children.
The subjects studied in this experiment involved 36 boys
and 36 girls from the Stanford University Nursery School ranging in age between 3 and 6. The control group was composed of 24 children. The first experimental group comprised 24 children exposed to aggressive model behavior. The second experimental group comprised 24 children exposed to nonaggressive model behavior. The first and second
experimental group were divided again based on sex. Finally, the experimental groups were divided into groups exposed to same-sex models and opposite-sex models.
Bandura found that the children exposed to the aggressive model were more
likely to act in physically aggressive ways than those who were not exposed to the aggressive model. For those children exposed to the aggressive model, the number of imitative physical aggressions exhibited by the boys was 38.2 and 12.7 for the girls. The same pattern applied to the instances of imitative verbal aggression exhibited by the
child exposed to the aggressive model as opposed to those exposed to the nonaggressive model or no model at all. The number of imitative verbal aggressions exhibited by the boys was 17 times and 15.7 times by the girls. Both the imitative physical and verbal aggression were rarely, if ever, exhibited
by the children exposed to the nonaggressive model or no model at all.
Bandura and his associates never successfully supported their theory of social learning in that specific behaviors such as aggression can be learned through observing and imitating others even if reinforcement is not used either on the model or
the subject. They came to the conclusion that children observing adult behaviour are influenced to think that this type of behaviour is acceptable thus weakening the child's aggressive inhibitions. The result of reduced aggressive inhibitions in children means that they are more likely to respond to future situations in a more
aggressive manner.
In a follow-up study, Bandura found that when children viewed aggressive behaviour and then viewed that behaviour being either rewarded or punished that children were less likely to emit aggressive behaviours when they had viewed an adult model being punished for
aggressive behavior. Children who saw the model rewarded did not differ in aggressive behaviors from those that saw a model receive no reward. Bandura then offered an incentive for all three groups of children to recall what had happened in the video, and all three groups recalled the modeled aggression at
approximately similar levels.
Media 2 Step Theory
it was discovered by Paul Lazarsfeld and company in the year 1940.
This theory means that how KEY people affect others.
We're not directly influence by the media but the middle man who known as " opinion leader"
The information from media moves from distinct stages.
1)Individuals which is the opinion leaders who pay close attention to the mass media and its messages receive the information
2)Opinion leaders pass on their own interpretations in addition to the actual media content
For more information about Opinion leader, there are 2 types of it
-Monomorphic
influention on one topic
-Polymorphic
influential on a variety of topics
Multi-Step theory
It basically means that there are different channels to influence us, not only media.
There are a process name diffusion process which the acceptance of an innovation is spread by communication to members to social system over time.
