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London, United Kingdom

Saturday, 8 January 2011

Research: Bobo Doll Experiment

Experiment:
- Children watched a video where an adult violently attacked a clown toy called a Bobo doll
- The children were then taken to a room with attractive toys that they were not permitted to touch
- The children were then led to another room with Bobo dolls
- 88% of the children imitated the violent behaviour that they had earlier viewed. 8 months later 40% of the children produced the same violent behaviour
- The conclusion reached was that children will imitate violent media texts



Key examples sited as causing or being contributory factors are:
- The film 'Childs Play 3' in the murder of James Bulger in 1993
- The game 'Man Hunt' in the murder of Stefan Pakeerah in 2004 by his friend Warren LeBlane
- The film 'A Clockwork Orange' (1971) in a number of rapes and violent attacks
- The film 'Severance' (2006) in the murder of Simon Everitt

People are clearly influenced by media texts, however because you watch violent texts doesn’t mean that you’re going to act out violent acts.

This is a very controversial experiment, which depicted that children who viewed violent media texts would then go and act violent behaviour but because there were many flaws in this experiment the conclusion is still just a theory.

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