Bobo Doll

Before 1961, many psychologists believed that watching violence drained aggressive impulses (catharsis). Albert Bandura suspected the opposite. He showed children a video of an adult beating up an inflatable "Bobo doll." When the children were later left alone with the doll, they didn't just play—they mimicked the exact violent assaults they had seen, even using guns and hammers. This book details the experiment that founded Social Learning Theory. It argues that we are not born violent, but we learn it through modeling. In an age of TikTok challenges and media violence, Bandura's findings are more relevant than ever. We are the mirrors of our environment.