Albert Bandura: Biography Of One Of The Most Influential Psychologists
Albert Bandura is one of the best-known psychologists in the history of the science of human behavior.
He holds the honor of being recognized as the most important living psychologist and has been compared to others who have died of the stature of Freud. However, his thinking is not Freudian at all, nor behaviorist as many continue to believe today.
Ideologue of the theory of social learning and very prolific author, his life is marked by a great contribution to psychology and by having changed the vision that was had about learning in the middle of the last century. Let’s see his interesting life through a brief biography of Albert Bandura in which we will also see his contributions to psychology.
Below we talk in more depth about the life events of this Canadian psychologist.
1. Early years
Albert Bandura was born in Mundare, Canada on December 4, 1925. His family, which was of Ukrainian and Polish origins, was large, which is why from his childhood, Bandura, who was the youngest of the six brothers, showed the ability to fend for himself
Living in a relatively small town, the local education did not always have everything necessary to teach everything the students needed. For this reason, his teachers encouraged him to take charge of his learning outside of class himself.
During his time at school, Bandura realized that Knowledge is something unstable, which changes over time either because new findings are discovered or because information becomes obsolete.
However, he also saw that The tools he had acquired to investigate on his own served him well to be updated over the years. It is possible that this influenced their adult opinion about the importance that the student acquires in their own educational process.
2. University education
Although Bandura initially intended to study biology, he ultimately opted to pursue university studies in psychology, specifically at the University of British Columbia.
The way Albert Bandura behaved during his university years is something that surprises. He liked to go several hours before classes started at his university and, out of boredom, he decided to sign up for several extra subjects. It was in these subjects that he had contact with the science of human behavior awakening great fascination.
It took him only three years to finish his university studies, graduating in 1949 and, later, he decided to study a Master’s degree in clinical psychology at the University of Iowa, in the United States, obtaining the degree in 1952.
3. Professional life
After completing the master’s degree and earning his doctorate some time later, Albert Bandura got an offer to work at Stanford University in which he has remained the rest of his life and, to this day, he continues to be a professor, although emeritus.
During his beginnings as a professor at the institution, the psychologist focused on offering his classes in the most efficient way in addition to initiating investigations into adolescent aggression.
Over time, was acquiring a deeper insight into behavior through imitation formulating hypotheses and theories about aspects such as behavioral imitation, whether with or without rewards or punishments after carrying out the action.
These first interests in these aspects little by little were transformed into what is perhaps Albert Bandura’s best-known theory, the theory of social learning.
The Bobo doll: social learning theory
The Bobo doll experiment is surely the most famous investigation into imitation behavior that Albert Bandura has ever carried out.
This research was carried out in 1961 and consisted of having several children watch a movie and others not. It showed several adults physically and verbally attacking an inflatable doll, called Bobo. Next, both the children who had seen the film and those who had not were taken to a room where Bobo was. The children who had seen the video They behaved in a similar way to how the adults had done, being violent with the doll
This finding was a great discovery in the 1960s, since it clashed with the main idea of behaviorism, which defended that human behavior was motivated solely by the presence of rewards and punishments, not simple imitation behaviors without any reward.
So that, Children imitated adults without being given anything in return Vicarious learning was formally demonstrated and, through this experiment, Bandura was able to develop his well-known theory of social learning.
The theory of social learning tries to understand how a person acquires knowledge, beliefs, attitudes and ways of thinking with respect to the social environment. The premise that underpins this theory is that learning is a cognitive process that cannot be separated from the context in which it occurs, be it family, school or any other type.
As we were already commenting, the general view that was held in psychology in the middle of the last century, especially in North America, was behaviorist, defending that learning was a process that was the result of a series of rewarded or punished actions.
But Bandura proved the opposite, that learning was rather the result of the child’s imitation of seeing peers as well as parents and other adults do certain actions. This led to including in behavior an entire behavioral repertoire seen in their closest social environment, in addition to acquiring the same ways of seeing the world and relating to it. All this without the need for reinforcements to be offered.
Although it should be noted that reinforcements and punishments are important aspects in the acquisition of certain behaviors, it should not be assumed that all learning will be based on conditioning. So that, This theory has served as a bridge between behaviorism and cognitivism understanding that there are some learnings that do work through being conditioned and others occur through imitation.
There are several postulates that can be highlighted from Bandura’s social learning theory:
1. Learning is partially cognitive
Prior to Bandura’s experiments, it was widely assumed within the community of psychologists that all learning occurred in response to certain environmental circumstances.
However, social learning theory argues that Higher mental processes should not be left aside that the individual can actually process the information beyond whether or not there are reinforcements that invite the behavior to be replicated.
2. Not all learning is observable
According to the research of Bandura and several of his followers, Not all learning has to be manifested externally immediately after having been acquired
Actions such as observation, reflection and decision making, although invisible, become very important in learning and can involve the inclusion or omission of certain behaviors.
3. Vicarious reinforcement
Another of the main ideas of the theory proposed by Bandura is the fact that a person can perform or inhibit their behaviors without needing to be the one receiving the punishments or rewards for having carried it out.
By observing how others behave and how they are benefited or harmed by it, a person can change their behavior based on what they have seen.
This is where the concept of vicarious reinforcement becomes important, that is, some type of beneficial or otherwise harmful factor that motivates whether or not to perform a behavior. It has been seen that This behavior is purely human, not manifested in other species
4. The relationship between learner and environment
According to the theory, the learner is not a passive individual who receives new knowledge in a completely given way and without participating in the process.
On the contrary, the person makes a whole series of changes in their beliefs, attitudes and ideas that they can use to change their own environment. So that, both learner and environment present a reciprocal relationship modifying each other.
Albert Bandura and his relationship with behaviorism
There are many people and even books specialized in psychology that relate the figure of Albert Bandura with that of behaviorism. However, it should be said that this author has always considered that his point of view does not coincide with all the ideas defended by behavioral psychologists.
In fact, in his principles, this author defended the idea that it was simplistic to reduce all human behavior in terms of cause and effect relationships. However, it must be said that In several of his works he uses behavioral terms such as stimulus and response, among others.
According to Bandura himself, his vision of human behavior could be included within what has been called social cognitivism, a current that is quite different from traditional behaviorism.
Works, merits and contributions
Albert Bandura has the merit of being the most cited living psychologist throughout the world, and of all psychologists, both living and dead, being in fourth place, only behind BF Skinner, Sigmund Freud and Jean Piaget. Bandura’s works, despite the fact that they are often considered behaviorist, have contributed to what has been called “the cognitive revolution” started in the late 60’s, affecting multiple fields of psychology.
He has written some books, among which stands out Aggression: an analysis of social learning of 1973, in which he focused on the origins of aggression and the importance it acquired when imitated through vicarious learning. Also, and not at all omittable, is his work Social learning theoryfrom 1977, where his vision of this type of learning was explained in great detail.
Among the honors that this psychologist has been able to hold have been being the president of the APA in 1974 in addition to receiving two awards from this same association in 1980 and 2004 for his scientific contribution.
