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The developmental theme of external influences on children's behaviour is examined in OCR H567 through a pair of studies — the classic Bandura et al. (1961) and the contemporary Chaney et al. (2004) — and Component 02 will ask you not only to know each study but to compare them and to judge how far the newer study changes our understanding of the theme. This is a distinct exam skill. A "compare-the-pair" answer that merely describes the two studies one after the other, with a "whereas" bolted between them, does not do what the question asks. The examiner wants a genuine, point-by-point comparison — organised by the dimensions on which the studies are similar and different — and a reasoned judgement about what the contemporary study adds, including what it reveals about individual, social and cultural diversity.
This lesson is built around that skill. It sets out the shared foundation of the two studies (both belong to the external-influences theme, both are broadly behaviourist, both show a child's behaviour shaped by an external influence), then works systematically through their similarities and differences — of behaviour studied, learning mechanism, method, setting, era, ethics and application. It then addresses the higher-order question: how far does Chaney update the theme, and how does the pair illuminate diversity? It closes with a fully worked comparison-style specimen question. Getting comfortable with the structure of a comparison answer here will serve you for every pair on the course.
| This lesson covers | OCR H567 Component 02 element | AO focus |
|---|---|---|
| The shared foundation of the two external-influences studies | Section A — Developmental; theme: external influences (the pair) | AO1 knowledge |
| Systematic similarities between Bandura and Chaney | Section A — Core studies (comparison) | AO1; AO3 |
| Systematic differences between Bandura and Chaney | Section A — Core studies (comparison) | AO1; AO3 |
| How far Chaney (contemporary) updates our understanding of the theme | Section B — Areas, perspectives, debates | AO3 evaluation |
| What the pair reveals about individual, social and cultural diversity | Section B — debates; diversity | AO2; AO3 |
The specification is referenced descriptively; consult the official OCR H567 specification document for its exact published wording. This lesson develops AO1 (accurate recall of both studies as the basis for comparison), AO2 (relating the studies to diversity and to novel behaviour) and, above all, AO3 (the structured comparison and the judgement about what the contemporary study adds).
Before drawing contrasts, it is essential to see what the two studies have in common, because a good comparison establishes the shared ground first and then locates the differences within it. Bandura and Chaney are paired for principled reasons, not by accident.
Both studies belong to the developmental theme of external influences on children's behaviour: in each, something outside the child — an observed adult model in Bandura, a reinforcing device in Chaney — reshapes what the child does. Both therefore make a broadly nurture-weighted claim, that behaviour is a product of the environment rather than of innate endowment. Both sit within the behaviourist perspective, which explains behaviour by learning from the environment: Bandura via the social-learning mechanism of observation and imitation, Chaney via the operant mechanism of positive reinforcement. Both study young children (nursery/pre-school age). And both, ultimately, speak to the same practical possibility — that because children's behaviour is shaped by external influences, we can deliberately arrange those influences to encourage desirable behaviour (or to avoid encouraging undesirable behaviour). This shared foundation is the reason the two studies together define the theme.
It is worth pausing on why OCR pairs a classic study with a contemporary one in the first place, because understanding the rationale helps you write the comparison. The pairing is not there simply to give you two studies instead of one. It embodies a claim about how psychological knowledge develops: a classic study establishes a phenomenon or principle, often under tightly controlled but artificial conditions, and a later study revisits that principle with newer methods, in a different context, and frequently for a different purpose. The classic and the contemporary are therefore in dialogue. Bandura established, in the 1960s, the raw fact that an external influence can install a behaviour in a child; Chaney, four decades on, takes that established fact for granted and asks a different question — not "can external influences shape children's behaviour?" (Bandura settled that) but "how usefully can we exploit them, and how responsibly can we study them?". Reading the pair as a conversation across time, rather than as two isolated experiments, is the single most useful frame for a compare-the-pair answer: it tells you what to compare (the shared principle) and what to judge (what the newer study adds to it).
A second reason the pairing is illuminating is that the two studies were conducted in strikingly different research cultures. Bandura's 1961 study predates the modern British Psychological Society and American Psychological Association ethics codes in anything like their current form; a study that deliberately teaches aggression to young children would face formidable ethical scrutiny today. Chaney's 2004 study was conducted under contemporary standards of informed consent and beneficence, in a health-research context where the whole point of the intervention was to help the participants. So the pair also silently documents how the discipline's ethical norms — and its willingness to intervene in children's lives — have shifted over forty years. That historical dimension is genuine evaluative material, not mere background, and it recurs across every classic/contemporary pair on the course.
| Dimension | Shared feature |
|---|---|
| Theme | Both address external influences on children's behaviour — behaviour changed by something outside the child |
| Perspective | Both are broadly behaviourist (learning from the environment) |
| Nature–nurture | Both weigh toward nurture — the environment shapes behaviour |
| Participants | Both study young children (Bandura ~4 years; Chaney ~3 years) |
| Determinism | Both imply a degree of environmental determinism — behaviour as a product of external conditions |
| Applied message | Both support the idea that behaviour can be deliberately shaped by arranging external influences |
| Quantitative measurement | Both reduce children's behaviour to quantitative measures (Bandura's counted acts; Chaney's percentages) for comparison |
The most important similarity to state explicitly in an exam is the conceptual one: both demonstrate that a child's behaviour can be externally shaped, which is precisely why they illustrate the same theme. Everything else follows from that.
The differences are where a comparison earns most of its marks, because they are more numerous and more revealing. Work through them by dimension.
| Dimension | Bandura et al. (1961) | Chaney et al. (2004) |
|---|---|---|
| Behaviour studied | Aggression — an undesirable behaviour we want to prevent | Health behaviour (asthma-medication use) — a desirable behaviour we want to encourage |
| Learning mechanism | Observational learning / imitation (social learning) | Operant conditioning (positive reinforcement) |
| Method | Laboratory experiment measured by structured observation | Field study measured by parent self-report questionnaire |
| Setting | Artificial laboratory at Stanford | Children's own homes in Perth |
| Control vs realism | High control, low ecological validity | High ecological validity, low control |
| Data source | Direct observation of the child's behaviour | Indirect, second-hand parent report |
| Sample | 72 children, one US university nursery | 32 children, Perth, Western Australia |
| Era | 1961 — pre-BPS-code era; deliberate exposure to an aggressive model | 2004 — modern ethical standards; benign, beneficial intervention |
| Ethics | Ethically problematic (teaching aggression to non-consenting children) | Ethically strong (consented, beneficial, no harm) |
| Application | Warns about the dangers of external influence (media violence, modelling) | Harnesses external influence for benefit (a clinical tool) |
Two of these differences deserve special emphasis because they are the ones most likely to unlock a top-band judgement. The first is the moral polarity of the two studies: Bandura studies an external influence producing something bad, Chaney an external influence producing something good. This is not a trivial observation — it shows that the theme "external influences on children's behaviour" is morally neutral in itself: the same developmental fact (children's behaviour is externally shaped) is a warning in one study and an opportunity in the other. The second is the methodological trade-off: Bandura buys control at the cost of realism, Chaney buys realism at the cost of control. Between them the pair demonstrates the classic tension in psychological method — and shows that the same theme can be investigated at both ends of the lab–field spectrum, each end compensating for the other's weakness.
It repays a moment to see how tightly the differences in the table are connected, because a top-band answer treats them as a web rather than a list. The difference in behaviour studied (aggression versus health) is not independent of the difference in ethics: it is precisely because Bandura studied a harmful behaviour, and had to induce it, that his study is ethically fraught, whereas Chaney's beneficial behaviour makes his study ethically comfortable. Likewise, the difference in method (lab versus field) drives the difference in data source (direct observation versus parent report) and the difference in control versus realism: choosing a real-home setting entails relying on parents rather than researchers to record behaviour, which entails both higher ecological validity and weaker control. And the difference in era (1961 versus 2004) sits behind several of the others — the ethical latitude Bandura enjoyed, and the health-research framing that made Chaney's intervention both possible and desirable, are partly products of their different times. So the ten rows of the table are not ten separate facts but a small number of root differences (behaviour studied, method chosen, era) whose consequences ripple outward. Being able to show these connections — that the moral polarity explains the ethical contrast, that the choice of setting explains the control–realism trade-off — is what turns a competent tabulation into a genuinely analytical comparison.
A further difference easy to overlook is what each study takes as its dependent variable and how close that measure sits to the behaviour of real interest. Bandura measured aggression directly, by observing exactly what the child did to the doll, but the behaviour itself — hitting an inflatable clown designed to be hit — is at some remove from real interpersonal aggression, so the measure is direct but the behaviour is artificial. Chaney measured a genuinely important real-world behaviour (taking asthma medication), but did so indirectly, through what parents reported rather than what researchers observed, so the behaviour is authentic but the measure is second-hand. This is a neat inversion: each study is "close" to real behaviour in one respect and "distant" in another. Bandura has a direct measure of an artificial behaviour; Chaney has an indirect measure of an authentic behaviour. Spotting that symmetry is exactly the sort of precise, two-sided observation that examiners reward, because it refuses the lazy summary that one study is simply "more realistic" than the other.
This is the highest-order question the specification asks about a pair, and it must be answered with a judgement, not a description. The honest answer is nuanced: Chaney updates the theme substantially in some respects and hardly at all in others.
Where Chaney genuinely updates the theme. In three ways the contemporary study meaningfully advances our understanding. First, it broadens the theme from a warning to an application: Bandura established that external influences shape children's behaviour, but studied a behaviour we want to stop; Chaney shows that the same principle can be engineered for benefit, turning a developmental insight into a clinical tool. That is a real conceptual advance — it demonstrates the usefulness of the theme. Second, it modernises the ethics and method: Chaney's benign, consented, real-world design shows how the theme can be investigated responsibly and with high ecological validity, addressing exactly the weaknesses (harm, artificiality) that dog Bandura. Third, it shifts the learning mechanism from observational learning to operant conditioning, showing that "external influences" is a broad theme encompassing several learning processes, not just imitation.
Where Chaney does not much update the theme. Against this, the underlying claim is essentially unchanged: both studies affirm the same basic developmental principle — that children's behaviour is powerfully shaped by their environment — which Bandura had already established. Chaney does not overturn or even qualify Bandura's finding; it extends its application. Moreover, Chaney is a small, short pilot relying on self-report, so its evidential weight is arguably weaker than Bandura's tightly controlled experiment; in that narrow sense the contemporary study is less methodologically decisive than the classic one, even as it is more ecologically valid and more ethical. The theme's core truth is Bandura's; Chaney's contribution is to show its reach and benign potential.
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