The concept of social learning has definitely put the popularity of "Jackass," the Johnny Knoxville stunt and practical-joke show into perspective for me. According to the textbook, social learning is how media effects one's behavior to imitate what they see in media. The example given is Bandura's Bobo doll experiment, where children watch as a model acts violently toward a Bobo doll and then rewarded with a prize afterwards. This then influences the children to act violently, imitating the video they saw, in order to receive a reward.
To further explain social learning, we allow the media to influence our behavior because of the outcomes we expect after acting a certain way.
Jackass, which first aired in 2000, has had been under scrutiny ever since. This is mainly because younger boys and fans of the show started to imitate the random, dangerous and violent acts that were on the show. In one show, Johnny Knoxville allows little children to shoot him in the privates with paintball guns and in another episode, he lights himself on fire. Two children suffered serious injuries after trying to copy-cat the latter stunt.
In comparison to the Bobo doll study, the boys who imitated the stunts sought attention (such as the kids seeking treats) and saw it as a way to gain recognition as jokesters, much like the Jackass crew. Through social learning, they saw how much popularity and laughs the Jackass cast received and wanted to repeat that outcome. The violence in both the Bobo doll study and the Jackass imitations are very pertinent to each other.
Below is just a sample of the many Jackass imitators that tried to leave the same mark on YouTube as Johnny Knoxville left on TV.
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