DOes seeing aggressive behavior manifest when children become adults?

Adults exposed to aggressive behavior at a young age are more prone to exhibit aggressive characteristics within their own intimate relationships. Bandura’s social learning theory (Duggan, O’Brien & Kennedy) plays a major role in aggressive behavior in which individuals learn by imitating what they have been exposed to or what they have seen (2001). For example, if a child were to see his father beat his mother on more than one occasion he could possibly develop the mind frame that it is socially acceptable to assault a woman, and in the future, result in assaulting his wife. Researchers reported that “a recent estimate from the Second National Family Violence Survey revealed that 10 million children were exposed to marital violence annually” (Duggan et al., 2001).