Field studies of modeled aggression

Use of classical conditioning procedures to control aggressive behaviors in children: a preliminary report

This experiment tested the effectiveness of classical conditioning procedures in reducing children's aggressive behaviors in a classroom setting. As hypothesized, 11 boys and 14 girls who were shown pictures of aggressive scenes paired with the presentation of negatively evaluated words subsequently displayed significantly fewer aggressive responses than controls who had not experienced these conditioning procedures. A significant teacher/classroom effect was also found, which appeared to be a function of the level of the 3 teachers' permissiveness. Specifically, children's aggressive behaviors occurred more frequently in the classroom where a permissive atmosphere prevailed than in the classroom where a more restrictive atmosphere was maintained. In those classrooms where a permissive atmosphere prevailed, the children who were the same sex as their teacher tended to display more aggressive responses than those children who were the opposite sex from their teacher.

Models and creativity

In order to determine whether exposure to a symbolic model could affect creative behavior, 130 male and female college students were randomly exposed to a prolific divergent thinking model, a prolific convergent thinking model, an inadequate convergent thinking model or no model on an unusual uses task. On identical, similar, and generalization tasks, Ss exposed to either convergent model tended to show more convergent responses and fewer divergent responses than those exposed to a divergent thinking model. On 4 of the 9 measures females had significantly higher scores than males, but there were no significant sex by treatment interactions.