Bandura defines social learning as the acquiescence of a certain behavior through direct learning, observation or imitation of models (Bandura 1971:3). Bandura’s theory also indicates that the interaction of individual factors, environmental factors and behavioral factors determined the human behavior and all three factors are interrelated and affect each other. This concept was named as the reciprocal determinism. The aforementioned scholar proved the theory of social learning by the infamous “Bobo doll” experiment. Bandura (1965) explains that nursery school children were divided into three groups and observed an aggressive film mediated model either rewarded, punished or left without consequence. Children in the model-rewarded group and no consequences group imitated both the aggressive behavior, hostile remarks and displayed novel forms of aggression. The children in control groups performed fewer responses that the children in the remaining two groups. However, when offered positive reinforcers in order to imitate the models aggressive behvaior, it revealed an equivalent learning of the behavior among children of all three groups. For an example if a teenager experiences aggressive behavior such as verbal abuse and slapping from his or her single mother due to stress, the teen may imitate the same aggresion on his or her …show more content…
One of the reasoning for this given by the authors of Understanding Psychology, Morris and Maisto (200, is the long established link between testosterone and aggression. The mentioned authors also states that this link explains the reason why violence is greatest amongst male teenagers and young adults (age 15-25), as this is the age which the testosterone levels are discovered to be the highest. Hermans, Putman & van Honk (2006) conducted a research amongst twenty healthy females who were injected doses of testosterone or placebo. The results showed a decrease in facial mimicry and empathy and the researchers admitted that the drawback is the fact that only female participants were tested, however, the researchers had a lot of doubt as to whether the male participants would have generated different results (Hermans, Putman & van Honk 2006). This experiment proves that there could be certain biological factors that effects the aggressive behavior observed in teenagers. Another research conducted by van Honk & Schutter (2007) on sixteen females, uncovered that when testosterone is present in one’s system, the individuals it reduced the ability for the individual to read facial threats (fear, anger, disgust), hence making the testosterone induced participants more