ABSTRACT
This chapter describes some cases of imitative behavior related to the previous experience and the present conditions of the imitation. A study by A. Bandura et al. was designed to investigate the imitation of aggressive behavior and the effect of punishment of aggression on the imitative response. The study was conducted on 80 3 to 5-year-old children, 40 boys and 40 girls, from a nursery school. The children were assigned to one of four groups: aggressive model-rewarded, aggressive model-punished, a control group which was shown highly expressive but nonaggressive models, and a second control group which had no exposure to models. All the children were then tested for aggressive behavior. Each of them was placed in a room containing a variety of toys, such as a baton, two large Bobo dolls, hoola hoop, plastic farm animals, a lasso, dart guns, and so on, which could reproduce the aggressive behavior of the models seen before.
