1. Date: 28 Jan 2015
Learning Objectives
Know and understand how nature/nurture has an impact on out
behaviour
Examine the concept of nurture and how it plays a key role in sociology
Exam date
17th
Jan
Title: Introduction to Sociology: Nature versus nurture
Lesson:

2. Starter:
Think of the things that we inherit as humans. E.g. Eye colour, height
etc. Make a list of these.

3. • The Bobo doll experiment
• Bandura hoped that the experiment would
prove that aggression can be explained, at
least in part, by social learning theory. The
theory of social learning would state that
behaviour such as aggression is learned
through observing and imitating others
Is our behaviour Taught or part of our nature?

4. • Nature: what we are born with
• Nurture: part of our upbringing
Key terms?

6. • In this experiment three groups of children saw a
film which showed the adult attacking an inflatable
doll with a stick. The doll was thrown across the
room, sat on, punched and kicked. Bandura provided
three alternative endings to the film:
• Group A - Saw only the doll being hit. Group B -
Saw the adult being praised and rewarded for
hitting the doll. Group C - Saw the adult being
punished for hitting the doll.
• When the children had seen the film, they were
given the same doll. Bandura observed their
behaviour which showed that groups A and B
imitated the aggressive behaviour they had
witnessed, while group C were less aggressive.
The experiment

7. • Bandura found that the children exposed to
the aggressive model were more likely to act
in physically aggressive ways than those who
were not exposed to the aggressive model.
For those children exposed to the
aggressive model, the number of imitative
physical aggressions exhibited by the boys
was 38.2 and 12.7 for the girls.
Results

8. 1. Is violence part of nature?
2. Can violent/aggressive behaviour be learnt from
video games?
3. Does this alter behvaiour?
Implications

10. • George was a thirteen year old from a middle
class family in America
• He was obsessed with Grand theft Auto
• One day he decided to go into his high school gun
down members of his class.
• His family said he showed no signs of aggressive
behaviour prior to this
1. What does this case teach us about the effect of
the environment on a person?
2. Is this case study enough to show that behaviour
is learnt rather than part of our nature?
Study

11. 1. Wild Peter
2. Victor, The Wild Child of Aveyron
3. Kaspar Hauser
4. The Indian Wolf-Girls
5. John Ssabunnya
6. The wild boy of Hesse
Feral children

12. 1. Outline the case study
2. What the case study show about human
behaviour?
3. Is human behaviour nature or nurture? Give
reasons for your answer?
Feral children