The social lens

The lens in brief

Social psychology studies how other people shape what we think, feel and do. Kurt Lewin, one of its founders, summed up its approach in a formula: behaviour is a function of the person and the environment, and the environment that matters most is usually other people. Social psychologists study conformity, obedience, group norms, roles and how people read social situations. A social norm is an unwritten rule about what is expected or allowed in a setting.

The Bobo doll study belongs partly to this family. Its cause is social, another person's example. But a social psychologist would read the situation more widely than the authors did.

How this lens reads the study

The model as a source of norms. Young children spend much of their day working out what is allowed. When an adult, a person of higher status, hits a doll and shouts "Sock him in the nose!", the child learns a norm: in this place, with this toy, this is what one does. On this reading, the model did not teach a skill. Most four-year-olds already know how to punch. The model changed what seemed acceptable. This is close to what Bandura called disinhibition, but described in social terms.

The silent experimenter. In the test room the experimenter stayed with the child, working at a desk in a far corner. The paper explains that a number of the children would not stay alone. A social psychologist would notice that she did not stop anyone hitting the doll. Silence from an adult in charge can work as approval. The behavioural lens describes the same silence in its own terms, as a signal that no punishment is coming. The experimenter was part of the social situation, not a neutral background.

Demand characteristics. In 1962 Martin Orne showed that people in experiments try to work out what the researcher wants and then act accordingly. He called the cues that reveal the purpose demand characteristics. A four-year-old who has just watched an adult hit a Bobo doll, and is then taken to a room containing a Bobo doll, may reasonably conclude that hitting it is what is expected. Textbooks often quote a child saying "Look, Mummy, there's the doll we have to hit", a remark usually credited to the media researcher Grant Noble (1975). It probably does not come from the 1961 study, because those children were fetched from their nursery by the experimenter, not brought by their mothers. But it points to a real problem with Bobo-type studies.

Social norms about gender. The children's remarks show them applying social rules. About the female model: "That's not the way for a lady to behave. Ladies are supposed to act like ladies." About the male model: "Al's a good socker." Children had already learned which acts suited which sex, and they used that knowledge to judge the models. The same aggressive act carried a different social meaning depending on who did it. This is one plausible reason the male model was copied more for physical aggression.

Play or aggression? Most definitions of aggression in social psychology require an intent to harm a target who would want to avoid the harm. A Bobo doll cannot be harmed and is built to be hit. James Tedeschi and Brian Quigley (1996), reviewing laboratory methods of studying aggression, argued that the Bobo paradigm may not measure aggression at all, but imitation of rough-and-tumble play with no intent to harm (as quoted by Ferguson, 2020). This does not make the findings unimportant, since copying is itself the main finding. But it limits what the study can say about aggression towards people.

Who is watching. In a later adult study, Richard Borden (1975) found that people behaved more aggressively when they believed the person watching them approved of aggression. In the Bobo test room, the only adult present was the experimenter, who could see the child hit the doll and said nothing. A child could read that silence as approval.

What is missing. In daily life aggression happens between people: a push over a toy, a group teasing someone, a fight in the playground. The test room had no peers, no victim and no one who could hit back. A social psychologist would say the study shows how children learn a behaviour, but not how aggression works in social life.

What this lens values in the study

It shows social influence very clearly. The model was a stranger, with no relationship or reward, and still changed children's behaviour within minutes. That is a striking demonstration of how strongly people take their cues from others. It also links well to later social research showing that models can make people more helpful as well as more aggressive.

What it would question

• The artificial setting: one child, one toy, no peers.
• Demand characteristics: the children may have done what they thought was expected.
• The status of the adult model and experimenter, which was not varied or measured.
• Whether behaviour towards a toy predicts behaviour towards people.

Evidence from this tradition

Two later social studies extend the Bobo finding outside the laboratory.

James Bryan and Mary Ann Test (1967) parked a car with a flat tyre by a road in Los Angeles. When drivers had just passed a scene of another driver helping a woman change a tyre, more of them stopped to help. This shows that models affect helping, not only aggression, in a real setting.

Jacques-Philippe Leyens, Leoncio Camino, Ross Parke and Leonard Berkowitz (1975) showed either violent or non-violent films over one week to groups of boys living in cottages at an institution in Belgium. Boys who watched violent films showed more physical aggression in their ordinary daily life afterwards, especially in cottages where aggression was already common. This is a field test of the Bobo idea, with real peers as targets. It also shows that the existing group norm changed the size of the effect.

A study this lens would design

1. Run the study in an ordinary nursery class, not a laboratory.
2. Use models of different status: a teacher, an older child, and an unknown adult.
3. Measure aggression towards peers, such as grabbing, pushing and name-calling, as well as helping and sharing.
4. Vary whether another adult approves, disapproves or says nothing after the model's behaviour.
5. Observe over several days, because norms take hold over time.

This design keeps the experimental logic but places it in real social life.

Try this

A replication is run twice. In version A, the experimenter in the test room says nothing and does paperwork. In version B, she smiles and nods whenever a child hits the doll. Children in version B hit the doll much more.

What does this suggest about the original study, from the social lens?

Show the reasoning

It suggests that the experimenter's behaviour is part of the cause. Her smiles and nods are a social signal that hitting is approved, and children respond to it. So in the original study, her silence may also have sent a signal. To a child, an adult in charge who does not object can look like permission.

This means the original effect may combine two social influences: the model's example and the experimenter's apparent acceptance. The study did not separate them, because the experimenter was present in every condition but her reactions were not varied. (Versions A and B are an invented example.)