Section C: Looking through other lenses
One study, nine lenses
The outline asks you to interpret the study through at least three other perspectives. This guide covers all nine, so you can see the whole range before choosing. Each lens page follows the same order: the lens in brief, how it reads the study, what it values, what it questions, evidence from that tradition, and a study it would design instead.
If the perspectives are new to you, read the short course-wide introduction on the nine lenses page first.
- Behavioural A strict behaviourist would say reinforcement was hiding in the study all along, in the child's past and in the doll itself.
- Cognitive To copy exact words in another room, the child had to notice, store and recall them. The cognitive lens asks what went on in the child's mind.
- Psychoanalytic A psychoanalyst would see frustrated children, a powerful adult and a safe target, and would ask what the hitting meant to each child.
- Biological Boys hit more, some children copied far more than others, and copying is something human brains do very well. The biological lens asks why.
- Humanistic The humanistic lens asks what the experience was like for each child, and whether children were treated as people or as subjects to be controlled.
- Social The model told children what was normal in that room. The social lens looks at norms, status, the experimenter's silence and the missing real-life relationships.
- Cultural Learning by watching may happen everywhere, but which models count, what counts as aggression and what is allowed differ between cultures.
- Critical Who gets to define aggression, why violence is located inside children, and how the gender assumptions and later political uses of the study shaped what it means.
- Decolonial A study of 72 American children became a universal fact taught worldwide. The decolonial lens asks how that happened, and what other knowledge was left out.
The nine readings side by side
Use this table to compare, not to replace the lens pages. Each row is one lens.
| Lens | What it sees in the study | Its sharpest question | The study it would run instead |
|---|---|---|---|
| Behavioural | Reinforcement hiding in the children's past, in the bouncing doll and in the room's lack of punishment | Was this really learning without reinforcement? | A single-case design that varies consequences for model and child over several weeks |
| Cognitive | Children who noticed, stored and recalled the model's acts, and judged them against gender schemas | Did children who did not copy still learn? | Separate tests of what children remember and what they choose to do |
| Psychoanalytic | Frustrated children displacing anger onto a safe target, or identifying with a powerful adult | What did the hitting mean to each child? | Repeated play sessions with familiar and unfamiliar models, plus parent interviews |
| Biological | An evolved capacity to imitate, and boys near the age peak of physical aggression | Why did some children, and more boys, copy more? | The same procedure with temperament, heart-rate and twin measures |
| Humanistic | Children's own experience and choices, missing from the counts | What was it like for the child, and was the child respected? | Child-friendly interviews and drawings, with the child's assent and no deliberate frustration |
| Social | An adult setting a norm for the room, and an experimenter whose silence looked like approval | Would this happen with real peers and real relationships? | A nursery-class study with models of different status and measures of aggression towards peers |
| Cultural | A universal learning process filled with American content: models, toys and gender roles | Who counts as a model in other cultures? | A multi-community study designed after ethnographic fieldwork |
| Critical | Violence turned into a property of individual children, and gender norms taken as given | Whose interests does this framing serve? | Participatory action research with a community on what makes children unsafe |
| Decolonial | A local Western result exported as universal knowledge, with other traditions ignored | Whose knowledge counts, and who decided? | A study built with an Indian community, in its language and with its concepts |
How the lenses connect
The lenses are not nine separate verdicts. Some agree with each other and some disagree. Noticing which is which will make your journal stronger.
- Behavioural and cognitive disagree about the same data. Both accept that the children copied. The behavioural lens says consequences control what children do. The cognitive lens says children learn more than they show. Bandura's 1965 study gives evidence that both are partly right.
- Psychoanalytic and humanistic agree that meaning matters. Both say counting acts misses what the act meant to the child, though they explain meaning differently: unconscious conflict for one, conscious experience and choice for the other.
- Social, cultural, critical and decolonial form a widening circle. The social lens widens the view to the room and its norms. The cultural lens widens it to the child's community. The critical lens widens it to society and power. The decolonial lens widens it to world history and whose knowledge counts.
- Biological and critical pull hardest in opposite directions. The biological lens looks for causes inside the body. The critical lens warns against locating social problems inside individuals at all. A careful answer can hold both: bodies differ, and societies shape what those differences mean.
Try this
Your journal must analyse the study through three other lenses. A friend chooses behavioural, cognitive and social, because 'they are the easiest'.
What is the weakness of this choice, and what would a stronger set of three look like?
Show the reasoning
These three lenses are all close to the study's own perspective. Social learning theory grew out of behaviourism, turned towards cognition and placed social influence at its centre. Using these three mostly restates the study's own logic, with small disagreements. The analysis will show less range.
A stronger set includes at least one lens that challenges the study's assumptions from outside. For example: cognitive, to show what the study implies about the mind; psychoanalytic or humanistic, to raise the question of meaning; and critical or decolonial, to question the study's universality and framing. This shows the reader that you understand how different paradigms disagree about what counts as knowledge.