Bandura and the Bobo Dolls
The person best known for research on observational
learning is psychologist Albert Bandura, who did some landmark
experiments showing that children who watched adults behaving
aggressively were more likely to behave aggressively themselves. His
most famous experiment was the Bobo doll study. Bandura let a group
of kindergarteners watch a film of an adult violently attacking an
inflatable plastic toy shaped like Bobo the Clown by hitting it,
sitting on it, hammering it, and so forth. He then let the children
into a room with Bobo dolls. The children precisely imitated the
adult’s behavior, gleefully attacking Bobo. Their behavior was a
type of observational learning.
