I remember (Dr. Bandura relates) reading a story reported by Professor Mowrer about a lonesome farmer who decided to get a parrot for company. After acquiring the bird, the farmer spent many long evenings teaching the parrot the phrase, "Say Uncle." Despite the devoted tutorial atteniton, the parrot proved totally unresponsive and finally, the frustrated farmer got a stick and struck the parrot on the head after each refusal to produce the desired phrase.

But the visceral method proved no more effective than the cerebral one, so the farmer grabbed his feathered friend and tossed him in the chicken house. A short time later the farmer heard a loud commotion in the chicken house and upon investigation found that the parrot was pummeling the startled chickens on the head with a stick and shouting, "Say Uncle! Say Uncle!"

The research whose results we print here was done by Dr. Albert Bandura, professor of Psychology at the University of Stanford. Apart from the intrinsic interest of his conclusions, the material presented here should demonstrate the full power of the media in shaping our values and molding human behavior.

It is useful, however, to try to understand the process of learning-by-imitation outlined here, because radicals could well use these methods for the opposite ends to foster decent human values and attitudes. At the very least, Dr. Bandura's work should teach us to realize quite how dangerous it is to leave control of the media in the wrong hands.

The following are excerpts from a paper delivered by Dr. Bandura. Much has been omitted. People professionally interested in his research should contact Dr. Bandura in California or the CRIMSON for references to the full published write-ups of the experiments.

A note of exhortation: the writing style, high socrelese, is not impenetrable. On the contrary, should one absorb the idiom it can be remarkably effective. It is worth the effort to do so.

Learning through Tuition vs. Learning through imitation of a Model.

One can distinguish two kinds of processes by which children acquire attitudes, values, and patterns of social behavior. First, there is learning that occurs on the basis of direct tuition or instrumental training. In this form of learning, parents and other socializing agents are relatively explicit about what they wish the child to learn and attempt to shape his behavior through rewarding and punishing consequences.

Although a certain amount of socialization of a child takes place through direct training, research bearing on modeling processes demonstrates that, unlike the relatively slow process of instrumental training, when a model is provided, patterns of behavior are rapidly acquired in large segements or in their entirety.

Let us now consider a series of experiments that both illustrates the process of learning through imitation and identifies some of the factors which serve to enhance or to reduce the occurrence of imitative behavior.

Transmission of Aggression through Film and TV.

One set of experiments was designed to determine the extent to which aggression can be transmitted to children through exposure to aggressive adult models. One group of children observed an aggressive model who exhibited relatively novel forms of physical and verbal aggression toward a large inflated plastic doll; a second group viewed the same model behave in a very subdued and inhibited manner, while children in a control group had no exposure to any models. Half the children in each of the experimental conditions observed models of the same sex as themselves and the remaining children in each group witnessed opposite-sex models.

This investigation was later extended in order to compare the effects of real-life and film-mediated or televised aggressive models on children's behavior. Children in the human film-aggression group viewed a movie showing the same adults who had served as models in the earlier experiment portraying the novel aggressive acts toward the inflated doll. Children in the cartoon-aggression group saw a film projected on a glass lenscreen in a television console. In this film a female model was costumed as a cat and exhibited aggressive behavior toward a plastic doll.

The results of these experiments leave little doubt that exposure to aggressive models heightens children's aggressive responses to subsequent frustration. As shown in Fig. 1, children who observed the aggressive models exhibited approximately twice as much aggression as did subjects in the nonaggressive model group or in the control group. In addition, children who witnessed the subdued nonaggressive model displayed the inhibited behavior characteristic of their model and expressed significantly less aggression than the control children.

Some evidence that the influence of models is partly determined by the sex appropriateness of their behavior is provided by the finding that the aggressive male model was a more powerful stimulus for aggression than the aggressive female model. Some of the children, particularly the boys, commented spontaneously on the fact that the female model's behavior was out of character (e.g., "That's no way for a lady to behave. Ladies are supposed to act like ladies" . . .).