Page 297 - The Social Animal

Human Aggression 279

there is reason to believe that the same kind of deindividuation takes
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place outside the laboratory. Brian Mullen analyzed newspaper re-
ports of 60 lynchings perpetrated between 1899 and 1946 and found
a powerful relationship between mob size and violence; the larger the
mob, the more heinous the atrocities committed. Mullen’s research
suggests that when people are part of a crowd, they are “faceless,” less
self-aware, and less mindful of prohibitions against aggressive, de-
structive actions. They are therefore less likely to take responsibility
for aggressive acts.

Social Learning, Violence, and the Mass Media Many
years ago, Albert Bandura and his colleagues conducted a series of
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classic experiments. The basic procedure in these studies was to
have an adult knock around a plastic, air-filled “Bobo” doll (the kind
that bounces back after it has been knocked down). Sometimes the
adult accompanied her physical aggression with verbal abuse against
the doll. Children who watched the adult were then allowed to play
with the doll. In these experiments, not only did the children imitate
the aggressive models, they also engaged in other forms of aggressive
behavior after having witnessed the aggressive behavior of the adult.
In short, the children did more than copy the behavior of an adult;
seeing a person behave aggressively served as an impetus for them to
engage in innovative aggressive behavior. We call this process social
learning.Why are these experiments considered so important? Who
cares what happens to a Bobo doll, anyway? Stay tuned.
One particularly powerful set of agents of social learning is the
mass media—especially television. There is no doubt that television
plays a major role in the socialization of children. There is also no
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doubt that TV remains steeped in violence. According to a recent
study, 61 percent of all TV programs contain violence—and, of those,
78 percent are without remorse, criticism, or penalty for that vio-
lence. Indeed, some 40 percent of the violent incidents seen on TV
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were initiated by characters portrayed as heroes or other attractive
role models for children. 74
Exactly what do children learn from watching violence on TV?
A number of long-term studies indicates that the more violence in-
dividuals watch on TV as children, the more violence they exhibit
years later as teenagers and young adults. In a typical study of this
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kind, teenagers are asked to recall which shows they watched on TV