Introduction
Social psychology refers to a branch of science dealing with the study of how one’s thoughts, beliefs, opinions, intentions, goals and feelings created through social context interfere with one’s ability to connect with others successfully. It looks at human behaviour as impacted by other people within their social construct(Mcleod, 2023). In most cases, how people behave is attached to the social construct of their immediate environment. It also looks at the conditions responsible for the change in the feelings and behaviour of a person. Children in their development must also learn about social skills to help them connect with other kids and other social environments. Thus, social psychology as a branch of science will help in conditioning good behaviours for socializing in children to assist them in developing good social skills(Mcleod, 2023). Through various experimental psychology studies, various stakeholders can help the children with the required social skills for better behaviour in different social environments. This study will look at social psychology from the standpoint of The Bobo Doll Experiment to help children develop good social skills for behavioural management in social constructs as per the selected article for review.
The Bobo Doll Experiment
Albert Bandura conducted the Bobo Doll Experiment. In this experiment, he investigated the impact of watching violent movies on children their behaviours(Galanaki & Malafantis, 2022). He was trying to find out if, by watching violent movies, children would develop negative social skills by becoming more violent against each other or their peers in a social setting. It is believed that allowing children to watch violent movies would impact their behaviour by crafting aggressive qualities, which may impact their social skills. The aggressive behaviours could, in turn, limit their ability to behave correctly with their peers in social settings. Thus, Bandura took this experiment to investigate if observed aggression had an impact on the children’s behaviours. This is because behaviour impacts one’s ability to connect with others in their social settings successfully. In this experiment, children would watch an adult associating with the Doll(Galanaki & Malafantis, 2022). The adult would behave normally or passively in one setting with the Doll. On the other side, he would behave aggressively with it by kicking, punching and yelling. The outcome showed that children who watched the conditioning experiment of violence would later act in the same way, which is different from those who watched the adult behave passively.
Results and Application
From the experiment, it is evident that children are impacted negatively by aggression of any kind. Observed aggression negatively impacts kids’ lives and may lead to a reduced ability to create solid social groups(Galanaki & Malafantis, 2022). The development of strong social groups in children is connected to their behaviours. Good behaviours impact their ability to monitor their behaviour towards others and connect effectively and comprehensively. This experiment confirms why children are continuing to be more violent in the current society. It may be connected to the violent and aggressive movies and games children are exposed to in the current society(Galanaki & Malafantis, 2022). The many video games children are exposed to currently have aggression and violent characters. These characters depicted violence in the movies and games have a negative impact on the behaviour and social skills of the exposed children.
Conclusion and Recommendation
In summary, children’s development of practical social skills relies on their behavioural development. Through social psychology, it is possible to investigate and identify the common reasons for changes in behaviour in children based on observed aggression. The findings through the Bobo Doll Experiment have shown the correlation between observed aggression and violent behaviors in children. The results of this experiment confirm that the massive rise of children’s aggression in modern society is fully connected to the movies and games they are allowed to interact with as they grow. The virtual world has great power in influencing the behaviours of children and thus impacts their social interactive skills development. Parents should be fully involved in regulating the amount of aggression the kids are exposed to through the movies and games they access.
References
Galanaki, E., & Malafantis, K. D. (2022). Albert Bandura’s experiments on aggression modelling in children: A psychoanalytic critique. Frontiers in Psychology, 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.988877
Mcleod, S. (2023, October 5). Social Psychology: Definition, theories, Scope, & Examples. Simply Psychology. https://www.simplypsychology.org/social-psychology.html
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