Essay Sample about Albert Bandura: Social Cognitive Psychologist

Albert Bandura, arguably one of the most influential psychologists of all time, developed the Social Cognitive Theory, which was known as the Social Learning Theory until 1986. In the 1960s conditioning and association were a big part of psychology due to Ivan Pavlov’s findings, but Bandura changed the path of psychology. He added another, an important layer of information that Skinner, Watson, and Pavlov learned. Albert Bandura forever changed psychology in social, cognitive, developmental, educational, and clinical psychology. (American Psychological Association, 2016). 

On December 4, 1925, in Mundare, Canada, Albert Bandura was born. Bandura was the youngest of six children, and the child of two hardworking, emigrant parents. This town with a population of around 400 was filled with immigrants of Eastern European descent, such as his parents. Though his parents had no formal education themselves, they believed education to be crucial and taught Bandura the importance of self-learning. His father learned how to read three different languages and was also on the school board. Being as it was such a small town, there was only one school and lacked many resources, making Bandura be a self-learner and take initiative at an early age. (Pajares, 2004). 

This love for education and learning greatly influenced Bandura’s journey to go to college. He went to the University of British Columbia in Vancouver with hopes of being in biological science. This all changed one day when he happened upon a course catalog that had psychology as a course. Three years later he graduated with the Bolocan Award in Psychology and left to get his PhD and a doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Iowa. 1953 was the first of many years that he was teaching psychology at Stanford University. (Pajares, 2004).

Albert Bandura has always been interested in social learning and aggression. His first study had to do with antisocial aggression in boys who came from intact homes. This researcher later led to the determinations and mechanism of observational learning. (American Psychological Association, 2016). 

This all leads up to the experiment Albert Bandura is most known for the Bobo Doll experiment. These children were split up into three different groups: the aggressive model, the non-aggression model, and no model (control group). In the first group, the adult or model would act aggressively towards the Bobo doll which included kicking, punching, and hammering the doll. In the second group, the non-aggressive adult played quietly with the toys in the room instead of the Bobo doll. The children were then taken to a room with toys, but these toys were taken away to stimulate frustration in the children. Finally, the children were taken to a room with toys and a Bobo doll to see how their interactions would be. Unsurprisingly, the children demonstrated the behavior of the model, both aggressively and aggressively. (McLeod, 2016).

This experiment catapulted Bandura’s career because this experiment showed: “Bobo doll experiment demonstrated that children are able to learn social behavior such as aggression through the process of observation learning, through watching the behavior of another person” (Bandura, 1977). “Albert Bandura's social learning theory suggests that observation and modeling play a primary role in how and why people learn” (Berkley EDU) Though this theory is commonly known now, at the time it was innovative because most of the psychology was based around a reward and punishment system shaping the way people thought. (Alyssa, 2021). 

Today, the social learning theory is recognized by people who haven’t taken a psychology class because it is so popular. This theory was not just a breakthrough for psychology, and it is now utilized by social workers and teachers. They are often able to identify certain behaviors as abuse from a parent or guardian. Social behaviors can be learned. The cycle of abuse. Many abusers have abused themselves. This is important to understand so it can be understood where abuse is coming from, and how to stop it. (McLeod, 2016). 

Albert Bandura won many awards because of his groundbreaking experiments including the National Medal of Science, known as the highest honor of Science by the US government and served as the APA president in 1974. He was a teacher at Stanford for 57 years and published 17 books throughout his lifetime, not including the hundreds of scientific papers he either wrote or co-wrote. Albert Bandura left an inexhaustible legacy behind before he died in 2021 at the age of 95 years old from congestive heart failure. (Alyssa, 2021).