BoBo Doll~Danielle Dempsey

After hearing about the BoBo Doll experiment for the past 7 years throughout undergrad and graduate school, it was interesting to finally be able to see the actual video of what occurred in the experiment. From what I know about the BoBo Doll experiment, Bandura's goal was to portray how modeling behaviors to children (in this case aggression) can have a significant impact on their emotional development as adults. This sort of modeling is apparent in everyday life. Two year olds may repeat curse words, teenagers claim it is ok for them to smoke or drink because their parents do it, etc. Basically, every move we make as adults/parents/educators may affect our children's behaviors. But let's face it, we aren't perfect! But we can still model positive behaviors and healthy choices to the best of our ability and hope that it makes a difference. That being said, there were several aspects of the experiment that I found noteworthy. Some things I have already mentioned in my responses to my classmates comments.

My first reaction as I watched the video was, "Is BoBo not supposed to be punched?" Here we have a big blow up bouncy toy that falls over and pops back up. I think it was made to be punched. I think I would have punched BoBo too even if I had not seen a video of aggressive adults and I have never experienced or been exposed to violence as a child. I understand that the children in this experiment took the aggression to another level, but I am curious what might have happened had the toy been different? I believe John made a similar point in his post. It's not like you can really do much else with the BoBo Doll. I am not trying to poke fun at this either, just offering an honest opinion. I do take this experiment very seriously because I can see the potential dangers of showing a video such as this to children, especially after seeing the level of violence they took it to. Which brings me to my next point...

As I watched the video of the woman "beating up" BoBo, I honestly did not feel that she did any significant damage to BoBo. The adult's level of violence compared to the children's was very different. The woman threw BoBo up in the air, tapped him, and swung him around. The children, on the other hand, resorted to weapons, and though I could not hear any, violent words. I wonder why the children took this level of aggression to the extreme? Some hypotheses? Perhaps they were trying to seem powerful. Maybe they were imitating a movie, cartoon, or TV show, or even what goes on in the home! Matt was the one who discussed how hostile homes may severely impact the child's behavior, particulary in school. A teacher friend of mine who is getting her Type 73 as well made the comment to me the other day that unfortunately teachers are trained to like or dislike students based strictly on their academic performance and not on what is really going on inside. I think this is true because I have witnessed students being criticized by educators without them taking the time to even get to understand or develop a relationship with the student. I understand that in a teacher's case it is 1 against a classroom of 20 or so, but I feel that everyone involved within the edcuational field should consider more than academic abilities. (Social emotional learning~remember! : )

This all being said, I appreciated everyone's diverse perspectives, as always. Though an experiment such as this may be considered unethical in today's world, I do not think the field of social science would be where it is now had it not been for "unethical" experiments. I am probably opening up a whole new can of worms, but without experiments such as BoBo, Milgram, and the Standford Prison Experiment, we may not be where we are today!