Learned Unsustainability: Bandura’s Bobo Doll Revisited

Abstract

Developmental social psychologist Albert Bandura’s 1961 Bobo doll experiments provide interesting insights for the field of education for sustainable development (ESD) today. This article discusses some of the implications Bandura’s model of learned aggression has for modelling learned unsustainability. These lessons are not limited to educational applications. The Bobo doll is, in some important respects, like a supply–demand model, for example. Comparing the Bobo doll with contemporary dominant knowledge systems and other Bobo doll-like artefacts produces interesting insights and lessons for educational and economics research design. New approaches for tackling contemporary unsustainability are suggested.