A 2002 survey ranked Bandura as the fourth most frequently cited psychologist of all time, behindB. F. Skinner,Sigmund Freud, andJean Piaget.[2] In April 2025, Bandura became the first psychologist with more than a millionGoogle Scholarcitations. During his lifetime, Bandura was widely described as the greatest living psychologist,[3][4][5][6] and as one of the most influential psychologists of all time.[7][8]
Bandura was born inMundare, Alberta, an open town of roughly 400 inhabitants, as the youngest child, in a family of six. The limitations of education in a remote town such as this caused Bandura to become independent and self-motivated in terms of learning, and these primarily developed traits proved very helpful in his lengthy career.[9] Bandura was of Polish andUkrainian descent; his father was from Kraków, Poland, whilst his mother was from Ukraine.[10]
Bandura's parents were a key influence in encouraging him to seek ventures out of the small hamlet they resided in. The summer after finishing high school, Bandura worked in theYukon to protect theAlaska Highway against sinking. Bandura later credited his work in the northerntundra as the origin of his interest in humanpsychopathology. It was in this experience in the Yukon, where he was exposed to a subculture of drinking and gambling, which helped broaden his perspective and scope of views on life.[10]
Bandura arrived in the US in 1949 and was naturalized in 1956. He married Virginia Varns (1921–2011) in 1952,[11] and they raised two daughters, Carol and Mary.[12]
Bandura took psychology courses in college and became passionate about the subject. Bandura graduated in three years, in 1949, with a B.A. from theUniversity of British Columbia, winning the Bolocan Award in psychology, and then moved to the then-epicenter of psychology, theUniversity of Iowa, from where he obtained his M.A. in 1951 and Ph.D. inclinical psychology in 1952.Arthur Benton was his academic adviser at Iowa,[13] giving Bandura a direct academic descent fromWilliam James,[14] whileClark Hull andKenneth Spence were influential collaborators. During his Iowa years, Bandura came to support a style of psychology that sought to investigate psychological phenomena through repeatable, experimental testing. His inclusion of such mental phenomena as imagery andrepresentation, and his concept ofreciprocal determinism, which postulated a relationship of mutual influence between an agent and its environment, marked a radical departure from the dominant behaviorism of the time. Bandura's expanded array of conceptual tools allowed for more potent modeling of such phenomena as observational learning and self-regulation, and provided psychologists with a practical way in which to theorize about mental processes, in opposition to thementalistic constructs ofpsychoanalysis andpersonality psychology.[8]
Upon graduation, he completed his postdoctoral internship at the Wichita Guidance Center. The following year, 1953, he accepted a teaching position atStanford University, which he held until becoming professor emeritus in 2010.[15] In 1974, he was elected president of theAmerican Psychological Association (APA), the world's largest association of psychologists.[16] Bandura would later state the only reason he agreed to be in the running for the APA election was because he wanted his 15 minutes of fame without any intentions of being elected. He also worked as a sports coach.[17]
Bandura was initially influenced by Robert Sears' work on familial antecedents ofsocial behavior and identificatory learning and gave up his research of the psychoanalytic theory.[18] He directed his initial research to the role of socialmodeling in humanmotivation, thought, and action. In collaboration with Richard Walters, his first doctoral student, he engaged in studies ofsocial learning andaggression. Their joint efforts illustrated the critical role of modeling in human behavior and led to a program of research into the determinants and mechanisms ofobservational learning.
The initial phase of Bandura's research analyzed the foundations of human learning, and the willingness of children and adults to imitate behavior they observed in other people, in particular, the emotion ofaggression. The research indicated thatmodels are an important means for learning new behaviors and for achieving behavioral change in an institutional setting.[19]
Social learning theory posits three regulatory systems that control human behavior. First, the antecedent inducements greatly influence the time and response of behavior. The stimulus that occursbefore the behavioral response must be appropriate in relation to the social context and the performers of the behavior. Second, that response and feedback influences have an important function. Following a response to a stimulus, the reinforcements, either by experience or by observation, will determine future occurrences of the behavior. Third, that cognitive functions are important in social learning, e.g. for aggressive behavior to occur, some people are readily angered by the sight or the thought of persons with whom they had hostile encounters, and that aggression-inducing memory is learned.[20]
Social learning theory became one of the theoretical frameworks forEntertainment-Education, a method of creating socially beneficial entertainment pioneered byMiguel Sabido. Bandura and Sabido went on to forge a close relationship and further refine the theory and practice.[21]
His research with Walters led to his first book,Adolescent Aggression, in 1959, followed bySocial Learning and Personality Development in 1963, and in 1973,Aggression: A Social Learning Analysis. During a period dominated bybehaviorism in the mold ofB.F. Skinner, Bandura believed the sole behavioral modifiers ofreward andpunishment inclassical andoperant conditioning were inadequate as a framework, and that many human behaviors were learned from other humans. Bandura began to analyze the means of treating unduly aggressive children by identifying sources of violence in their lives. Initial research in the area had begun in the 1940s underNeal Miller andJohn Dollard; his continued work in this line eventually culminated in theBobo doll experiment, which led to his 1977 treatise,Social Learning Theory.[22] Many of his innovations came from his focus on empirical investigation and reproducible investigation, contrary toSigmund Freud's popular theories ofpsychoanalysis.[23] In 1974,Stanford University awarded him an endowed chair and he became David Starr Jordan Professor of Social Science in Psychology.
In 1961, Bandura conducted a controversial experiment known as theBobo doll experiment, designed to show that similar behaviors were learned by individuals shaping their own behavior after the actions of models. The Bobo doll experiment emphasized how young individuals are influenced by the acts of adults. When the adults were praised for their aggressive behavior, the children were more likely to keep on hitting the doll. However, when the adults were punished, they consequently stopped hitting the doll as well. Bandura's results from this experiment were widely credited with helping shift the focus in academic psychology from purebehaviorism tocognitive psychology.[24]
By the mid-1980s, Bandura's research had taken a more holistic bent, and his analysis tended towards giving a more comprehensive overview of human cognition in the context of social learning. The theory he expanded from social learning theory soon became known as social cognitive theory.
The foundation of Albert Bandura's social learning theory is the idea that people may learn by seeing and copying the observable behaviors of others. As an alternative to the earlier work of colleague psychologist B.F. Skinner, who was well-known for advocating the behaviorist theory, psychologists Albert Bandura and Robert Sears presented the social learning hypothesis.[25]
In 1986, Bandura publishedSocial Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory, in which he re-conceptualized individuals as self-organizing, proactive, self-reflecting, and self-regulating, in opposition to the orthodox conception of humans as governed by external forces. He advanced concepts oftriadic reciprocal causation, which determined the connections between human behavior, environmental factors, and personal factors such as cognitive, affective, and biological events, and ofreciprocal determinism, governing the causal relations between such factors. Bandura's emphasis on the capacity of agents to self-organize and self-regulate would eventually give rise to his later work onself-efficacy.[26]
While investigating the processes by which modeling alleviatesphobic disorders in snake-phobics, he found that self-efficacy beliefs (which the phobic individuals had in their own capabilities to alleviate their phobia) mediated changes in behavior and in fear-arousal. He launched a major program of research examining the influential role of self-referent thought in psychological functioning. Although he continued to explore and write on theoretical problems relating to myriad topics, from the late 1970s he devoted much attention to exploring the role of self-efficacy beliefs in human functioning.[27]
In 1986 he publishedSocial Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory, a book in which he offered a social cognitive theory of human functioning that accords a central role to cognitive, vicarious, self-regulatory and self-reflective processes in human adaptation and change. This theory has its roots in an agentic perspective that views people as self-organizing, proactive, self-reflecting and self-regulating, not just as reactive organisms shaped byenvironmental forces or driven by inner impulses. His book,Self-efficacy: The exercise of control was published in 1997.[28]
Bandura's social cognitive theories have been applied to education as well, mainly focusing onself-efficacy,self-regulation,observational learning, andreciprocal determinism. Bandura's research showed that high perceived self-efficacy led teachers and students to set higher goals, and it increased the likelihood that they would dedicate themselves to those goals.[29][30] In an educational setting self-efficacy refers to a student or teacher's confidence to participate in certain actions that will help them achieve distinct goals.[31][32]
He was elected a Fellow of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1980.[16] He received the Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions from theAmerican Psychological Association in 1980 for pioneering the research in the field ofself-regulated learning.[35] In 1999 he received the Thorndike Award for Distinguished Contributions of Psychology to Education from the American Psychological Association, and in 2001, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association for the Advancement of Behavior Therapy. He was the recipient of the Outstanding Lifetime Contribution to Psychology Award from the American Psychological Association and the Lifetime Achievement Award from theWestern Psychological Association, the James McKeen Cattell Award from theAmerican Psychological Society, and the Gold Medal Award for Distinguished Lifetime Contribution to Psychological Science from theAmerican Psychological Foundation. In 2008, he received theUniversity of LouisvilleGrawemeyer Award for contributions to psychology.[36]
In 2014, he was made an Officer of theOrder of Canada "for his foundational contributions to social psychology, notably for uncovering the influence of observation on human learning and aggression".[37] In 2016, he was awarded theNational Medal of Science bypresidentBarack Obama.[38]
^Golas, J. (2010. "Effective teacher preparation programs: Bridging the gap between educational technology availability and its utilization". "International Forum of Teaching & Studies, 6" (1), 16–18
^Bandura, A.; Barbaranelli, C. (1996). "Multifaceted impact of self-efficacy beliefs on academic functioning".Child Development, 67" (3), 1206–1222
^Elrich, R. J.; Russ-Eft, D. (2011). "Applying social cognitive theory to academic advising to access students learning outcomes".NACADA Journal, 31 (2), 5–15
^Bandura, A.; Wood, R. (1989). "Effect of perceived controllability and performance standards on self-regulation of complex decision making".Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56 (5), 805–814
Benight, C.C.; Bandura, A. (2004). "Social cognitive theory of posttraumatic recovery:The role of perceived self-efficacy".Behaviour Research and Therapy.42 (10):1129–1148.doi:10.1016/j.brat.2003.08.008.PMID15350854.S2CID3786696.
Caprara, G.; Fida, R.; Vecchione, M.; Del Bove, G.; Vecchio, G.; Barabaranelli, C.; Bandura, A. (2008). "Longitudinal analysis of the role of perceived self-efficacy for self-regulatory learning in academic continuance an achievement".Journal of Educational Psychology.100 (3):525–534.doi:10.1037/0022-0663.100.3.525.
Bandura, A. (1989). Social cognitive theory. In R. Vasta (Ed.),Annals of Child Development, 6. Six theories of child development (pp. 1–60). Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.
Bandura, A., & Walters. Richard H. (1959).Adolescent aggression; a study of the influence of child-training practices and family interrelationships. New York: Ronald Press.
Bandura, A., & Walters, R. H. (1963).Social learning and personality development. New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston.
Evans, R. I. (1989).Albert Bandura: The man and his ideas: A dialogue. New York: Praeger.
Haggbloom, S. J.; Warnick, R.; et al. (2002). "The 100 most eminent psychologists of the 20th century".Review of General Psychology.6 (2):139–152.doi:10.1037/1089-2680.6.2.139.S2CID145668721.
Zimmerman, Barry J., & Schunk, Dale H. (Eds.)(2003).Educational psychology: A century of contributions. Mahwah, NJ, US: Erlbaum.ISBN0-8058-3681-0
