Cooper and Mackie (1986)

1. This is the study to know for the social learning theory of criminality, and you can be asked for it by name.
2. It tests whether children copy aggression they have observed on a screen.

Background and aim

1. Social learning theory says behaviour is learnt by observing and imitating a model, so aggression should be learnable the same way.
2. Cooper and Mackie wanted to know whether video games affect violent behaviour more than television does, on the grounds that a game is played rather than watched.
3. Hypothesis: playing an aggressive video game would have more effect on violent behaviour than playing other games.
4. They also looked for gender differences between the boys and girls in the sample.

Method

1. Design: a laboratory experiment using independent measures.
2. Independent variable: the type of game, with three conditions.
   1. A violent video game, a non-violent video game, and a paper-and-pen maze game as the control condition.
3. Dependent variable: aggression, measured in two separate ways.
4. Sample: 84 children aged 9 to 11 from New Jersey in the USA.
   1. Consent was gained from the children's parents rather than from the children themselves.
5. Procedure: children were allocated in pairs to one of the three games.
   1. Within each pair, one child played while the other watched.
   2. They then swapped over in a second trial, so every child both played and observed.

Results

1. Children in the aggressive game condition spent more time with the aggressive toy than children in the other two conditions.
2. That effect was stronger in girls than in boys.
3. Game type had no effect on the interpersonal aggression measure.
4. On that measure, children were more aggressive when they had played rather than watched.
5. The questionnaire showed boys performed better on the violent game and enjoyed it more.

Conclusions

1. Children imitated what they had observed, choosing the violent toy more often after the violent game, and this was mainly true of girls.
2. The absence of any effect on interpersonal aggression was explained by the game containing no human characters to model.
3. Observation therefore affects learnt behaviour, which is the claim at the centre of the social learning theory of criminality.
4. The finding that playing produced more aggression than watching fits the researchers' idea that an active model is a stronger influence than a passive screen.

Criticisms

1. Strengths: the reasons the study is still worth citing.
   1. A controlled laboratory experiment with a control condition allows a cause and effect claim about game type.
   2. Parental consent and standardised timings make it ethically sound and easy to replicate.
   3. Two different measures of aggression give a fuller picture than either would alone.
2. Weaknesses: the reasons the findings are hard to trust or transfer.
   1. Ecological validity was low, because games are normally played at home or in an arcade rather than in a laboratory under strict timing.
   2. Independent measures were used, so the aggressive game group may already have contained more aggressive children to begin with.
   3. The sample was 84 American children in a narrow age band, so it does not generalise across cultures or ages.
   4. Only the immediate effect was measured, when repeated play over months may matter more.
   5. The findings lack temporal validity, since games in 1986 were far less realistic than they are now.

Turning this into marks

1. When two criticisms are asked for, make them genuinely separate, such as low ecological validity and the narrow American sample, rather than two versions of the same point about the laboratory.
2. Name the detail, such as 84 children aged 9 to 11 or the buzzer measure of interpersonal aggression, because writing that children played games does not secure the knowledge mark.
3. The mark most often lost is reporting the study as proof that video games cause crime, when what was measured was toy choice and aggressive play.