Tma1

TMA 01 part 2 Introduction My name is Sue Owens; I am currently studying a course called ‘Discovering Psychology’ with the Open University. I am a parent with 2 teenage boys and found the following experiment conducted with children both fascinating and interesting I hope you do too. The Experiment This report is to give you an understanding as to the experiment that was carried out by whom and why the experiment took place. The experiment was carried out by Albert Bandura and several colleagues in 1963 it was done to see how children would behave and if they would imitate aggressive behaviour seen, the children were split into groups and shown a similar set up within each group. The children were equally split by gender i.e. equal number of boys and girls in each group. * The first group of children was taken to a room with toys to play with, whilst they were in the room a live model entered with a doll and began acting in an aggressive way towards the doll, in the form of punching, hitting and being vocally aggressive towards it. * The second group of children witnessed a similar set up with the doll but the difference being they saw the aggression taking place on a TV in the shape of a film. * The third group saw the same aggression carried out but this time they saw it in cartoon film form rather than real human beings. * The fourth group witnessed no aggressive behaviour at all. In the next section I will look at what these findings discovered and how the children reacted to the aggression and if this was imitated by them. What was discovered' It was discovered that the children in the first three groups and who witnessed the aggressive behaviour did show an increase in aggressive acts compared to the children who were shown no aggression at all. It also showed that more aggressive acts were carried out by the boys than the girls. It is clear that children will mimic behaviour they witness and I think in this experiment they are witnessing an adult behaving in this way and with no discipline and enforcement of non aggression they are almost permitted to act in this way. Below is a table with the findings, I think you will find this both interesting and informative. CONDITION |   | GIRLS |   | BOYS |   |   | | Female Model | Male Model | Female Model | Male Model |   | | | | |   | Live Model | | 65.8 | 57.3 | 76.8 | 131.8 | Film Model | | 87 | 79.5 | 114.5 | 85 |   | | GIRLS | | BOYS |   | Control (no model) |   | 36.4 |   | 72.2 |   | As you can see by this table it clearly shows that children will imitate aggressive behaviour, the boys showed much higher acts of aggression compared to the girls, but much more towards the male live model than the film one. I think this shows by nature that boys will act more aggressively than girls. Even in the controlled situation with no aggression the boys still showed significantly higher levels of aggression than the girls. Although in our everyday lives we try to protect our children from violent and aggressive behaviour is it increasingly difficult as there are so many outside influences, such as the media, television, DVD’s, computer games and some music can have very aggressive sounding lyrics. Although some studies do show that these are not linked to aggressive behaviour I feel that the experiment carried out by Bandura and his colleagues featured above clearly shows that by subjecting the children as they did to aggressive acts that there was an increase in their aggressive behaviour and so this must have an influence on the way the children act. One such study was carried out by Brad Bushman and Rowell Huesmann in 2006 this concentrated very much on the effects that the TV, film, computer games, comics and music industries all influenced us and this concluded that exposure to media violence was linked to aggressive behaviour. However, this was not a strong link and other factors such as personality can contribute to this. I have two teenage boys and I see the difference in them when they have been on what I would call an aggressive computer game, they become very loud and boisterous, and although you could argue that this is just boys being boys I feel that these games have a definite influence on their behaviour. Conclusion I conclude that with the experiments carried out and my own experience as a Mother of two that the violence and aggression that is seen in society today in the shape of the media, computer games, music etc does in some way have a negative influence on our children. Children learn from what they see and from a very young age they mimic others around them. References Bandura A., Ross, D. And Ross S (1963) Imitation of film-mediated aggressive models. Bushman, B.J and Huesmann L.R, (2006) Short term and long term effects of violent media on aggression in children and adults. TMA 01 Part 3 Self Reflection I have throughout this TMA enjoyed the experience of learning and discovering new information. The information I have gathered has been fascinating and although I have always believed that our children are influenced quite heavily by what they see through the media and copying adults It is interesting to read about experiments conducted and see the results they find. My biggest difficulty with this task was fitting in enough time for reading and completing the TMA, I will have to manage my time more effectively for the second TMA.