Jon Venables and Robert Thompson

Jamie Bulger Case

  

Social Learning Theory

Social learning theory is based on how behaviour is shaped through the observational learning of important models and that observational learning can be both direct and indirect. Bandura stated that there are four steps in observational learning. The first is attention, where the individual has the ability to pay focused attention to what is happening around them. Retention refers to a person’s ability to store and recall the observed information. Reproduction occurs when the observed behaviour is imitated and practiced and motivation is an individual’s desire to learn copy and practice observed behaviour. Bandura made it clear that we are more likely to copy behaviour of someone if we see them as powerful, similar and nurturing. For example children are more likely to copy their parents as they are seen as powerful and nurturing. When learning these different behaviours there are two ways in which it can be carried out. Direct learning occurs through our observations and imitations of others known as social learning and indirect learning occurs through observations of other people and their consequences. Bandura, Ross and Ross conducted an experiment on seventy two preschool boys and girls who were split into three groups – watching an aggressive model being violent towards a bobo doll, watching a non-aggressive model and the third where they were not exposed to either. Bandura found that there were higher levels of physical and verbal aggression towards the bobo doll when children witnessed the aggressive model with the bobo doll compared to the other conditions and therefore concluded that aggression can be learned via observation and imitation. Furthermore, he found that children who saw the model who was aggressive being rewarded for their behaviour were more likely to repeat it.

Summary of the Case

Jamie was taken from Bootle shopping centre on February the 14th in 1993. On CCTV footage which captured the moment of his abduction frame by haunting frame, we saw him being taken through the mall by a pair of shadowy silhouettes. His final journey ended on a railway embankment in Walton.

James, who was a month short of his third birthday, was found two days later, on February 14, 1993. He had 22 injuries to his head, and another 20 to his body, inflicted with a 22lb iron bar and 27 bricks. 

How the case can be linked to Social Learning Theory

Robert's mother Ann married Robert Thompson Snr when she was just 18. He was a man who qualified as a husband and father in name only. An aggressive alcoholic, he would beat Ann mercilessly. On one occasion, she suffered a miscarriage when she was jammed in a door during a violent row. The boys did not escape the beatings. They were punished by their father with sticks and belts. 'See the evil in my eyes, tw*t,' he'd say to them when he was angry. In 1988, he abandoned his family for another woman. Ann Thompson was unable to cope and turned to drink. At the Top House pub in Walton, neighbours recalled her fights with other women, and sometimes even with men. She was in the pub from opening time at 11am, and when the kids got home they found her rotten drunk and unable to stand,' another local recalled. 'Often, people would have to carry her home.' The devastating effect this had on the children was revealed in a case conference held at the NSPCC in Liverpool a few weeks after James Bulger died. In relation to Social Learning Theory, the theory suggests that individuals are more likely to copy the behaviour of someone else who is seen as powerful, similar and/or nurturing, therefore, by Robert growing up and watching his father be aggressive towards his mother, he is more likely to replicate this behaviour. Robert could have learnt the behaviour in the two main ways that Social Learning Theory suggests that behaviour is learnt. For example, with indirect learning, Robert's father was never punished for his actions and therefore Robert was unable to learn the consequences. 

Jon Venables was also from a broken home. He was the middle of three children born to Neil and Susan Venables, whose marriage was already in trouble when Jon arrived. They divorced when he was three years old. Like Ann Thompson, Venables' mother Susan was a regular visitor to local pubs. In January 1987, police were called to the house after the children (then aged seven, five and three) had been left alone for three hours.

Jon's behaviour deteriorated after his parents split up. His favourite trick with other children was a kick in the shins, followed by a punch to the rib cage. If he didn't get his way he would get the family Rottweiler, Blackie, to bark at other terrified youngsters. Venables spent a few days of the week with his father, who friends insisted was a devoted parent. But it emerged that he had rented more than 400 videos in the few years before James Bulger was murdered. Scores of them contained ultraviolence or pornography.

One of them was the notorious 'video nasty' I Spit On Your Grave, in which a woman is gang raped in a cabin. She avenges herself on the rapists: one is hanged by the neck, another is slaughtered in the bath, and a third is axed in the back, with a close-up of the blade sinking into 'flesh'. 

Another video rented by Mr Venables  -  he always denied his son ever watched them  -  was Child's Play 3. The 'star' is a demonic doll called Chucky, which comes to life in a military academy. In a dreadful echo of the Bulger tragedy, he abducts the youngest cadet and tries to kill him under the wheels of a fairground ghost train. 

But it is Chucky  -  dressed in toddler's dungarees, his faced splashed with blue 'war games' paint  -  who gets horribly mutilated. The video was the last one rented by Mr Venables before James was abducted, splashed with blue paint, and killed. 

In relation to Social Learning Theory, it would suggest that Jon learnt through the four stages of observational learning with the videos that his Dad would rent. For example, with the last film that Jon's father rented before James was abducted, a young cadet was abducted and was attempted to be killed by a train. This relates to what Jon and Robert did when they abducted James as they reproduced the behaviour in which Jon had observed as James was found next to train tracks. This also links to direct learning as Robert imitated the behavior of those they have observed.