Albert Bandura

Albert Bandura (Mundare, Canada, 1925 – Stanford, California, 2021) was a Canadian-American psychologist and professor at Stanford University. He was trained within behaviorism, but his work helped move psychology toward a cognitive approach. He is best known for social learning theory, which later developed into social cognitive theory, and for the concept of self-efficacy.

Bandura grew up in a small village of about four hundred people, in a family of immigrants from Eastern Europe. After attending the local school, he worked in the Yukon, an experience he later linked to his interest in human psychopathology. He studied at the University of British Columbia and then at the University of Iowa, where he earned his doctorate in clinical psychology in 1952. That same year he joined the faculty at Stanford, where he stayed until becoming professor emeritus in 2010. In 1974 he served as president of the American Psychological Association.

His early research focused on observational learning. Against the account of B. F. Skinner, which relied on reinforcement and punishment, he argued that much human learning happens by watching others and what follows from their actions. In his social learning theory, behavior depends on three regulating factors: the cues that precede an action, the responses that follow it, and cognitive processes, meaning what people think and remember about such experiences.

In 1961 he carried out the Bobo doll experiment. Children who saw an adult hit the doll tended to copy the behavior, especially when the adult was rewarded, and they were less likely to do so when the adult was scolded. Over time he developed a more holistic view of human cognition. In 1986 he published Social Foundations of Thought and Action, which portrayed people as agents who organize, reflect on, and regulate themselves rather than as passive recipients of outside forces.

From this line of thought came his work on self-efficacy, a person's belief in their ability to achieve a result. While studying how modeling reduced fear of snakes, he found that these beliefs shaped behavioral change and fear responses. The concept was later applied to education, health, and therapy.

His influence has been wide. He was regarded during his lifetime as one of the most influential psychologists in history, and a 2002 survey ranked him as the fourth most cited psychologist. His ideas laid lasting foundations for social, clinical, and educational psychology.