The Brain: A Secret History - Emotions; Bandura Bobo Doll Experiment — Transcript

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1. 0:06Watson had shown that emotions are
2. 0:09learned and Harlow that we are intensely
3. 0:12social creatures. So it was natural to
4. 0:15put these two ideas together and ask how
5. 0:18much of what we do and feel is learned
6. 0:21from other people. In 1961, American
7. 0:25psychologist Albert Bandura set out to
8. 0:28see how far just watching other people
9. 0:31influences our behavior.
10. 0:33[Music]
11. 0:36Bandura chose to study aggression.
12. 0:41At the time, the widespread view was
13. 0:44that watching violence reduces
14. 0:46aggression. It purges us. But was this
15. 0:50true?
16. 0:53[Music]
17. 0:57To find out, Bandura experimented on
18. 1:00small children aged 3 to five.
19. 1:07So what Bandura did is he put an adult
20. 1:09in a room with a child and a bunch of
21. 1:12toys, including something he called the
22. 1:13Burbo doll, which is a giant inflatable
23. 1:16doll. Then what happened after about a
24. 1:19minute? The adult unexpectedly started
25. 1:22beating up the doll in really quite a
26. 1:23vicious manner, shouting, screaming,
27. 1:26kicking, hitting with a hammer and went
28. 1:29on like this for about 10 minutes.
29. 1:33What would the child do if after
30. 1:35watching the adult they were left in a
31. 1:37room on their own with the same toys?
32. 1:41[Music]
33. 1:47Oh, she really is going for it.
34. 1:52She's doing exactly the same as she saw
35. 1:54the adult do. She's lifted the doll up
36. 1:57and now she's really hammering it. She's
37. 1:59got a little hammer out and she's having
38. 2:00good to shows innovation if nothing
39. 2:04else.
40. 2:06Every child who watched the adult being
41. 2:08violent copied much of what they'd seen.
42. 2:11The closest imitation was when a child
43. 2:13observed an adult of the same sex.
44. 2:16Now he's got a gun out and he's using
45. 2:18that a combination of the gun and the
46. 2:20hammer to just whack the doll.
47. 2:24He's got a very aggressive expression on
48. 2:25his face.
49. 2:29Importantly, another group who had
50. 2:31watched an adult play gently played
51. 2:33calmly, showing no signs of aggression.
52. 2:37Basically, what the children saw, the
53. 2:40children did. This was an utterly
54. 2:43unexpected finding.
55. 2:47Before Bander did this experiment,
56. 2:49psychologists thought that seeing
57. 2:51somebody else acting out a violent scene
58. 2:54would be cathartic. It would sort of
59. 2:55purge you. But what this clearly
60. 2:58demonstrated and really shocked people
61. 2:59at the time is that actually what
62. 3:02happens when you see something doing
63. 3:03violent actions you tend to imitate
64. 3:06them.
65. 3:11Bandura's findings were given added
66. 3:13impact by his timing. His experiment
67. 3:16took place just as television was moving
68. 3:18into the home.
69. 3:20[Music]
70. 3:22Two years later, Bandura reran his
71. 3:25experiment with one important
72. 3:27difference.
73. 3:30This time, he wanted to compare how
74. 3:33children react to watching an aggressive
75. 3:35adult, not in real life, but on film.
76. 3:41Children watched two versions. One was a
77. 3:44straightforward recording of the adult
78. 3:46beating up the Bobo doll. The second, a
79. 3:50fantasy version with the attacking adult
80. 3:53dressed as a cat.
81. 3:55In almost every case, Bandura got the
82. 3:57same results. Children imitated what
83. 4:00they'd seen. The results were dynamite.
84. 4:06This was one of the first experiments to
85. 4:08look at the impact of television
86. 4:10violence. The complicated relationship
87. 4:13between TV and behavior is still being
88. 4:16debated,
89. 4:18but it was Bandura who opened the
90. 4:20floodgates and launched an entirely new
91. 4:23area of research.
92. 4:34Right. Okay. On
93. 4:36Bandura had shown that we can be
94. 4:38strongly influenced by other people's
95. 4:40behavior.
96. 4:42This is the basis of so-called social
97. 4:44learning theory.
98. 4:46We didn't have a bowl.
99. 4:48Okay. So, measure out about 4 oz. I
100. 4:50think
101. 4:51which one's o.
102. 4:54But it's also clear that how we learn
103. 4:56changes as we mature. As we grow up,
104. 5:00something else happens to temper our
105. 5:02behavior.
106. 5:04We develop a capacity to reflect on what
107. 5:07we see.
108. 5:09We identify with other people.
109. 5:11Sweet tooth. There you go.
110. 5:12We develop empathy.
111. 5:15Tastes good.