Addition to OFCOM research: Bobo doll experiment

As explained in the previous post, my main concern with the narrative would be violence as we do use a gunshot but we need to follow OFCOM's rules on violence for pre-watershed audiences, which is also in the previous post, and we aren't going to show the gun, we won't be misusing any objects and location is suitable for the audience.

This post is linking to the pre-watershed audience and OFCOM's rules which gives us an idea of how easily it is for a child to mimic what they see on screen. The Bobo doll experiment was conducted by the famous Dr. Albert Bandura who is a professor of psychology at Stanford University. Dr. Bandura's experiment was a study of aggression, he records a female adult punching a blow-up clown doll and throwing it in the air, hitting it with a toy hammer, taking it to the ground and punching the doll. This film was shown to female and male children and the children were then allowed to go into a room with a similar toy hammer used by the adult and the same doll the adult hit and the children were also surrounded by several other toys. Both gender children had mimicked the exact aggression shown in the film, e.g. throwing the doll in the air and also taking it to the ground and hitting it with the toy hammer.

This has already proven that the children are influenced by violence seen on screen and wish to imitate the characters actions, but this video also shows that the exposure of this aggressive modelling from the adult had led to both children of the different genders have an increase attraction to guns even though the adult did not use any guns in the recording. Children who did not see the video of the adult beating the doll were not attracted to the guns, only those who had seen the video had the attraction to guns. The children had also picked up offensive language. Male children were showing more aggression than the female children, males tend to use offensive language more than the females and would attack with greater force, the females also did tend to go play with other toys and not attack the doll for a while but did eventually return to the clown, males also left the doll but not as long as the females.

Eventually the children had developed their own ways of hitting the doll. This experiment was criticised because of the use of the doll, the dolls function was to be hit, it was designed as a play toy that was meant to be attacked. This experiment was therefore repeated but instead of a toy clown, a real clown was used. The children were exposed to the video of an adult attacking the clown and then released into a room with a clown which they ended up attacking in similar ways to the adults.

The whole point of this post is to show that even the slightest bit of violence shown or anything which has been misused or even the location being inappropriate and the characters not showing any recognition of potential danger can influence a young audience and develop their violence. This means that, when recording, the detail and attention to the location and objects used is crucial.