PS276 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Social Learning Theory, Random Assignment
Document Summary
3 components of the study of adolescence: fundamental changes, contexts, and psychosocial developments of adolescence. Nature vs nurture heories: biological, organismic, learning, sociological and historical-anthropological approaches. Seeing media violence should lead people to experience it themselves symbolically or vicariously and thus it should lead people watching violence to be less violent themselves. Watching violence leads observer to imitate that behaviour, watching violence = acting violently. Collect observations on 2+ variables as they occur naturally and describe extent to which these variables vary together. Cannot be sure that one variable is causing the other (unclear causation) Helps figure out causation but does not rule out possibility that some other factor may be involved. Only through experiments/manipulating one of the variables and then observing changes in the other, can we determine causation. Supports prediction that child viewers of media violence are influenced to become more aggressive and imitate what they see (bobo doll study, disinhibition)
