The Bobo Doll Experiment

In the US, threats of legislative action led to a 1994 agreement that the television industry would fund a project for monitoring the ‘status of television violence.

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The US reports represent the most recent and extensive application of counting techniques to media violence. Projects concentrated on examining the amount and types of violence shown on television. The 1997 NTVS Report argues that there is clear evidence, based on ‘careful and critical readings’ of research collected over the last 40 years, that media violence contributes significantly to violence in society referring particularly to the Surgeon General's Report Television and Social Behaviour (1972) and the Bandura, Ross and Ross study of the Bobo doll

The Bobo Doll Studies
The ‘Bobo’ is an inflatable plastic doll, about one metre tall, with a weighted base, designed so that when knocked over it will rebound. The research team showed experimental groups of young people film of another person beating such a doll with a baseball bat then, having frustrated them by taking favoured toys away, put them in a room with a similar doll and bat.



In some experiments, the model had been rewarded or punished for beating the doll, forms of punishment including one described by the researchers as ‘slapping.’ The researchers found that those who had been shown film of the model beating the doll were more likely to do so than the control group, while those who saw the model being rewarded were more likely to do so than those who saw the model being punished. Control group members acted aggressively in a variety of ways but they did not beat the doll with the baseball bat. The failure to take account of the difference between beating a doll with a baseball bat on the one hand is a striking aspect of the research.

There is also the issue that applies to all research studies, whether or not what is seen in the experiment room is anything like what actually occurs in real life.