Learning of aggression as a function of presence of a human model, response intensity, and target of the response

Results suggest that the high magnitude theory of aggression may be applicable for the observational learning of aggression and that the features of the surrogate may have been irrelevant in some experiments which have studied surrogate aggression in children.

Abstract

Abstract An aggressive modeling display in past research with children has had three distinct components: (a) the performing model, (b) the high-intensity response produced by the model, and (c) the human surrogate which served as a target for the response. The presence of these components was manipulated with video displays in order to examine the contribution of each component to the observational learning of surrogate aggression by 112 five-year-olds. The model served predominantly an information transmission function. However, the greatest amount of learning occurred, and imitative responses were most intense, when the displayed events were performed by a model in a vigorous fashion. Other results suggest that the high magnitude theory of aggression may be applicable for the observational learning of aggression and that the features of the surrogate may have been irrelevant in some experiments which have studied surrogate aggression in children.