Studies of reinforcement of aggression. III. Transfer of responses to an interpersonal situation.

Bandura and Walters (2, 3) have proposed that physically aggressive responses may be learned under nonfrustrating conditions, e.g., through direct reinforcement during play, and then transferred to interpersonal situations. For example, a father may reinforce, through approval or other means, his child's hitting responses to a punchball. In this way, the father develops in his child a potentially pain-producing habit that is likely to be elicited in a wide variety of stimulus situations, especially those in which the hitting response serves as an instrumental act that secures the child some extrinsic reward.