Bodo Dolls And Aggression Analysis

Further there are certain scholars who advocate that the 1961 experiment was not related to aggression in the first place and must be viewed as the underlying desire of the children to either act as adults or to please adults for incentives rather than the outcome being used as a genuine indicator of aggression. Besides, some scholars also suggest that the choice of Bodo dolls was wrong as they are meant to be hit which does not necessarily amount to violence as perceived by Bendura (Ferguson, 2010). Additionally some scholars hint at the responses of children as being survival instincts rather than aggression since a key attribute of bodo dolls is their ability to bounce back and give an impression as though they are coming to hit you. They …show more content…
Besides scholars also indicate of the low ecological validity of the study as the study has essentially been performed in experimental settings where the prevailing conditions might be significantly different from the conditions existing in real life. In this context, it is noteworthy that in the experiment there was no interaction between the adult role model and the children and additionally there was no familiarity between the adult role model and subjects which is often not the case as the role model is usually a member from the family with whom the child usually has a medium to high degree of familiarity. As a result, the conclusion drawn by Bendura may be highly simplistic and naive version of the plethora forces at play in the real settings which the subjects were insulated from during the experiment (Wortman, Loftus & Weaver, …show more content…
Clearly this is of immense significance since there are conflicting forces are play in the real scenario especially when the socialisation process may condemn violence and try to minimise it but simultaneous the child is also exposed to the outside world through media whereby he/she views the various incidence of violence and their representation by the media (Pierce & Cheney, 2008). Hence in such a situation, the precise impact of these variables has not been understood by Bendura’s experiment and thus it highly limits the use of the conclusions drawn to the contemporary debates with the intent of theory building or policy making. In this context, scholars have also raised the significance of underlying cognitive abilities to learn from such abilities and the extent to which these conflicting events have an influence on the underlying behaviour. It is widely opined that children with better cognitive ability which to some extent may be linked to biological factors may tend to more responsive (in the long run) to the short term exposure of events of violence as compared to those who have poor cognitive and understanding skills. Further in wake of the potential long term effect of the exposure