Albert Bandura: An Eminent Psychologist Essay (Biography)

Introduction

Albert Bandura was born to a Polish wheat farmer on December 4, 1925 in Alberta Canada. He served his elementary and high school years at the one and only school that was available in town (Pajares, 2004). At the school, Bandura notes that most of the learning was left to the initiative of the students as there was lack of teachers as well as resources. The school is said to have had only one mathematics textbook for instance (Pajares, 2004). While at high school he realized that while “the content of most textbooks is perishable, the tools of self directness serve one well over time” (Stokes, 1986). Some of the situations he had to overcome are regarded to have greatly influenced his later emphasis on the significance of personal agency (Evans, 1989).

Main body

After high school, he went ahead to the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. It is here while passing time at the library he found course catalog and perused it in attempt to find a filler career (Pajares, 2004). He noticed a course in psychology that suitably could serve as a filler course. This course is said to have sparked his interests as he had found his career (Evans, 1989). While intending to major in Sciences, he took psychology, class and decided to concentrate on it (Evans, 1989). In 1949, he graduated with the Bolocan Award in Psychology. He wrote his first article in 1982, “The Psychology of Chance Encounters and Life Paths (Pajares, 2004).” In the article he explored how personal initiative could place a person into situations where fortuitous circumstances can shape the courses lives take (Evans, 1989).

This Award took him to University of Iowa. It is said that at Iowa faculty, students monitored/followed theory and research at Yale due to the association between Spence and Clark Hull (Sampson, 1981). Under the leadership of Hull, Yale Institute of Human Relations produced social learning theory in 1930s seeking to offer explanation for key aspects of personality and social development as laid down by Freud (Evans, 1989). These aspects included among others, dependency, aggression, identification, conscience formation as well as defense mechanisms

(Pajares, 2004). “Bandura was not influenced by the Hullian theory due to its stress on tedious trial that cultures relayed social moves and complex competences basically through vicarious experiences and that studies of modeling and imitation by Miller and Donald offered an alternative mode that gained competences and knowledge (Pajares, 2004).”

Bandura had his MA degree in 1951, and a year later he was awarded Ph. D degree in clinical psychology. In order to acquire a great deal of common problems of living Bandura went to a postdoctoral internship at Wichita Guidance Center (Bandura, 2006). The Center accorded Bandura the much needed social connectedness due to its association with diverse community services. One day Bandura was attracted by some material a renowned psychologist Robert Sears was revising on familial antecedents of social behavior and identificatory learning focusing on non aggressive reaction to frustration (Bandura, 2006).

Together with Richard Walters, Bandura began field studies of social learning and aggression. They were taken back by the convectional challenge of “explaining antisocial aggression in boys who came from intact homes in advantaged residential areas rather than showing that multiple adverse conditions tend to spawn behavioral problems (Stokes, 1986)”. Bandura together with his first doctoral student found out that hyper aggressive adolescents more often than not, had parents who modeled antagonistic manners. There findings contradicted with Freud’s assumption that parental punishment internally inhibited children’s expression of hostile constraints. Due to this finding he wrote his first book “Adolescent Aggression” (1959) which led to another one titled “Aggression: Asocial learning Analysis (Evans, 1989).

Armed with the knowledge of how people learn by observation, he then embarked his study to abstract modeling of rule governed behavior and to inhibition via vicarious experience. His finding led him to conduct a research on social modeling encompassing the now popular inflated plastic Bobo doll. Prior to this research it was common belief (as per Freudian theory of carthasis) that modeled violence drained observer’s antagonistic drives and lowered such behavior (Schultz & Schultz, 2004. In this research Bandura exposed children to social models who exhibited either novel or non violent behaviors toward rebounding dolls. Those who were exposed to violent models consequently exhibited (displayed) the novels forms of aggression toward the Bobo doll, while control group rarely did (Evans, 1989).

These finding confirmed the occurrence of observational learning in the absence of reinforcement to the viewers. Also under the same research Bandura and his colleagues (Sheila Rose & Dorne) were able to show that children are able to learn new patters of behaviors vicariously without participating in their doing or without being offered any kickback (Evans, 1989). This line of theory was in opposition to views in vogue that held learning to be consequence of direct reinforcement (Schultz & Schultz, 2004. It also conflicted with conditioning account of modeling and imitation as laid down by Miller and Dollard a factor that led him (Bandura) to differentiate between cognitive effects of modeling on acquisition and motivational effects of rewards on imitative performance as laid down in his second book “Social Learning and Personality Development’ 1963 (Bandura, 2006), (Evans, 1989).

Bandura is also noted to have developed a social cognition theory of human functioning, that accords a primary function to cognitive, vicarious, self-regulatory and self-reflective processes in human adaptation and change. Social cognitive theory is based on the observation that people are self organizing, proactive, self reflecting and self regulating as opposed to being reactive organizing modeled and protected by linear impulses(Evans, 1989) (Bandura, A. (1989).

Human functioning is construed to be a product of interrelation of personal behavioral as well as environmental influences. These findings are contained in his book “Social Foundations of Thought and Actions, A Social Cognitive Theory” (Bandura, 2006). This move was motivated by his belief that the length of his theorizing and research had increased beyond the boundaries of social learning. Moreover it was founded on his ideologies such expectancy theory, drive theory, operant theory (Pajares, 2004), (Evans, 1989).

With the social cognitive theory he has defied the general trend in psychology, by looking into processes that are significant in many areas of human functioning whether education sports, health, organizational settings, medicine, mental heath as well as social political areas (Pajares, 2004).

Bandura huge scope of theory originates from his multi-scientific zeal as well as his theories simplicity in application. He is well noted to have discovered that strongly guided mastery treatment could do away with strongly built snake phobias in a matter of hours (Pajares, 2004). This discovery was as a result of his study on how people’s perceptions of their ability to control what appeared to be threat to them affected neurotransmitters and stress related level in the blood stream (Pajares, 2004).

With mental processes, he conducted a number of studies on the subject of self efficacy (Evans, 1989). He summed up self efficacy to be self esteem as well as capacity to cope with life’s problems (Evans, 1989). From his work people have been able to know that people who have high deal of self efficacy, believe that they are competent of dealing with day today life encounters (Schultz & Schultz, 2004). They consider themselves to have the ability to meet daily obstacles while on the other hand low efficacy people, feel that they are weak and hence unable to cope with daily encounters. They feel that there is nothing they can do to reverse this situation. Thus they are seen to have the likelihood of giving up whatever they were doing when they encounter problems (Evans, 1989).

Conclusion

In conclusion, from the many honors and awards he has been able to receive; it is evident that he has contributed greatly in the sphere of psychology. Some of the awards he received due to his contribution include distinguished achievement award from the American Psychological Association in addition to scientist award from Californian State Psychological Association (Evans, 1989). After being elected president of American Psychological Association he was awarded distinguished contributions of Psychology to Education Award from American Psy.Ass. The tear 2004, he was acknowledged with outstanding lifetime contributions to Psychology Award by the American Psychological Association. His achievements in the field of psychology are manifested by the many honorably degrees he has been offered from all corners of the world (The Psi café 2001).

References

1. Bandura, A. (2006). Autobiography. M. G. Lindzey & W. M. Runyan (Eds.) A history of psychology in autobiography (Vol. IX). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association.
2. 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.
3. Schultz, D.P. & Schultz, S.E. (2004). A History of Modern Psychology (8th ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth/Thompson Learning, Inc.
4. Evans, R. I. (1989). Albert Bandura: The man and his ideas: A dialogue. New York: Praeger.
5. Pajares, F. (2004). Albert Bandura: Biographical sketch.
6. Stokes, D. (1986)”Chance Can Play Key Role in Life, Psychologist Says.” Stanford Campus Report
7. Sampson, E. E (1981). Cognitive psychology and ideology. American Psychologist, 36, 730-743.
8. The Psi Cafe: Albert Bandura. (2001).