Assume your child is behaving aggressively. What would you do to change that behaviour.

Assume your child is behaving aggressively. What would you do to change that behaviour.

Bobo Doll Experiment: Bandura showed children movies of adults interacting with an inflatable Bobo doll. In some videos the adults were not aggressive, playing nicely with the doll. In others they were aggressive, hitting a punching the doll and using aggressive language.

What Bandura found (and we will discuss this research more in a later module) is that children learn to be aggressive, but children were also aggressive in novel ways -- they were inventive in how they aggressed against the doll.

Environmental Influences: The environment can also make us aggressive. Painful incidents, heat, being attacked, crowding, and other kinds of arousal can all make a more aggressive. This is why we often hit back if we have been hurt, why of violent crimes are more common in hotter cities/in the summer, and that crowds can often become spectacularly violent (remember the riots from a previous module).

How to reduce aggression: So how do we reduce aggression? Freud, and other researchers have argued that we can use what is called catharsis. Catharsis means we aggress against something else (like is argued in frustration aggression theory) and that makes us feel better and thus less aggressive. Maybe we can watch violent television or play violent videogames so that we are less violent in our own lives. But does catharsis work? Does behaving aggressively reduce our levels of aggression? Although there has been some debate in the literature on this, the short answer is: no. Catharsis does not work. Catharsis does not occur with violent behaviour. Being violent increases future violent behaviour. There is no debate.

A social learning approach to violence reduction:

If we take what we know from social learning theory, we should be able to develop ways to reduce aggression and violence. Bandura would argue that we should reward non-aggressive behaviour, and this will naturally reduce violence. In addition, we could teach non-aggressive conflict resolution, reinforce positive behaviour (as opposed to punishing negative behaviour) and, perhaps most importantly reduce children's exposure to violent films, television and video games. We will come back to this topic in a later module on the role of media in aggression.