Priming in Media

The priming theory is supported by Albert Bandura's 1961 Bobo Doll experiment. Priming is the theory that media images motivate similar ideas in the brains of the audience. For example, when children watch one cartoon character act violently toward another cartoon character, that child is more likely to act violently toward another child. Or, when someone uses a baseball bat to kill someone and steal their car while playing the video game Grand Theft Auto, that person is more likely to attack someone with a baseball, steal a car, or both. Some believe that people, especially children, may store media images about how to react in certain circumstances with violent behavior, and then call on those images and recreate them in real-life situations.

Albert Bandura performed an experiment, commonly known as the Bobo Doll experiment, in 1961 to determine the effect of viewing violent behavior. Bandura showed some children a video of someone acting violently toward an inflatable doll. He then placed the children in a room with an inflatable doll, and observed the way the children treated the doll. Bandura also placed children that had not seen the video in a room with the inflatable doll and compared the way those children treated the doll with the way the children who saw the video treated the doll. Bandura found that the children exposed to the violent movie played much more aggressively and violently with the doll than those that did not see the movie. Also, he found that those exposed developed an attraction to guns and displayed hostile language toward the doll as well as physical abuse, while the control group did not.

The results of this experiment support the theory that media images create related thoughts and behavior in the audience. When violence is portrayed in the media, it causes and increase in violent thoughts and behaviors in the media. Now, while not supported by this experiment, it is reasonable to conclude that this effect is not limited to violence. Other thoughts and behaviors could theoretically be increased by related media images, such as kindness or promiscuity.