This theory acknowledges that there are some cognitive elements to being able to observe and imitate behaviours. These cognitive elements include; attention – in order to observe a behaviour children must possess the skills of attention, perception and understanding of behaviour. Retention – in order to be able to imitate a behaviour, individuals must possess memory skills and the ability to think abstractly about the behaviour. Production – in order to imitate behaviours individuals must be able to physically and realistically reproduce the behaviour they wish to copy, and finally motivation – for reinforcement to be effective, individuals must value the rewards and be motivated by what they expect to achieve from imitating a behaviour. Anti-social behaviour can be the result of something we have seen in either real life or in the media, a strong influence on our behaviour.
This was particular the case when they saw the adult being rewarded for their aggressive behaviour, thus supporting that reward influences the likelihood of a behaviour being performed. However, the study lacks validity because the children may have been aware of what was expected of them, leading to them displaying demand characteristic when playing with the doll. The study also focuses on aggression towards a doll rather than real-life aggression, meaning the same results may not be applied in real life settings. There is also the key aspect of gender differences, as boys were more likely to be more aggressive than guys thus resulting in their violent behaviour. To an extent, it can also be argued that the experiment was unethical as the children may have
This is vicarious reinforcement. A child forms a mental representation of an event, including the possible rewards or punishments of the behaviour. When a child imitates an aggressive behaviour, they gain direct experience, and the outcome of the behaviour influences the value of aggression for the child. If they are rewarded they are more likely to repeat the behaviour. Children develop self-efficacy, which is confidence in their ability to successful carry out a behaviour.
Spanking helps to teach our kids right from wrong and what path they should follow, if the spanking is a negative treatment that stops them from doing things like, fighting, stealing, lying and any other negative behaviour that will make them not want to do it anymore. It will teach them that the consequences of that behaviour are good and they won’t do it anymore, so child spanking is not abusive it is teaching and instructing. Spanking long term consequences can cause increased aggressiveness in children which is what you would see in an abusive
Perspective Taking and Moral Motivation of Children Involved In Bullying.’ They tested a hypothesis to see if bullies although socially competent are they lacking in perspective taking moral motivation? They wondered if it would explain the exploitation of social skills for manipulative and anti-social goals. To be even more precise they hypothesized to see if bullies displayed more advanced perspective taking skills than bully-victims. The hypothesis included children from different bullying perspectives including bullies, bully-victims, victims and children exhibiting pro-social behavior. In doing so, they could accurately measure the data creating specific results when comparing each group in moral intentions.
He states that results of research on the harmful effects of media violence on children are either so vague that they can be openly interpreted to something different or so insignificant that they can be ignored. Fowles side of the article focuses on criticizing the opposite side. He claims that there is not enough evidence on the media for being the primary source of violence that infects children. He finds several interpretations to each of the research studies that claim that there are negative effects on the exposure to media violence. He makes a point that viewers are not incompetent and that they actively interpret and process violence in the media to know the reality of the violence they viewed.
(Berger,279) A second area to examine in moral development is in the discipline of the child. Physical punishment can also lead a child to believe that becoming physical can be a solution to a problem or disagreement. In the text its states that physical punishment can lead to long term aggression problems.
While Turley provides sufficient amount of evidence from various professionals, the essence of the author’s original argument that violent toys should be seen as beneficial was lost in the midst of quoting the many opinions and research of other individuals. This makes it difficult to determine Turley’s intentions, making the argument less persuasive. One example is the introduction of Nancy Carlsson-Paige stating that toys came from manifested ideas of adults which seem to deviate and contradict Turley’s point that playing with violent toys is beneficial. Instead Turley could have posted statistics to show how playing with toy guns helps children
Aggression is an action or series of actions where the aim is to cause harm to another person or object. Social learning theory states that aggressive behaviour is learned directly (operant conditioning) and indirectly (vicarious). For example, if someone gets something they want when they’re aggressive the action will be reinforced therefore likely to be repeated. And if a person sees their role model rewarded for an aggressive action the observer is likely to imitate that model. The model is most likely to be imitated if: the model is similar to the observer, the model is admired and/or the observer as low self-esteem.
Some evidence for this theory is by Bandura, who found that children imitated very precisely role models who displayed aggressive behaviour towards a Bobo Doll. Furthermore, he found that children were more likely to imitate the same sex role model. However, there were some methodological limitations with the way in which this was investigated such as the possibility of the children who took part in the study not behaving in the same way that they would have in a real life situation. So, while the research provides some evidence for the theory, it is not conclusive that aggressive behaviour is always learned vicariously. This theory is also reductionist as there may be other viable explanations for aggression such as biological causes.