Albert Bandura: biography of one of the most influential psychologists

Albert Bandura has been one of the most important psychologists of the "Cognitive Revolution".

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 other deceased psychologists such as Freud. However, his thinking is not Freudian at all, nor is it behaviorist, as many still believe today.

Ideologue of the social learning theory and very prolific author, his life is marked by a great contribution to psychology and for having changed the vision that was held about learning in the middle of the last century. Let's take a look at his interesting life through a brief biography of Albert Bandura. biography of Albert Bandurain which we will also see his contributions to psychology.

Biography of Albert Bandura

The following is a more in-depth discussion of the life events of this Canadian psychologist.

Early years

Albert Bandura was born in Mundare, Canada, on December 4, 1925.on December 4, 1925. His family, which was of Ukrainian and Polish origins, was large, which is why already in his childhood, Bandura, who was the youngest of six siblings, showed an aptitude to fend for himself.

Living in a relatively small town, the local education system did not always have everything necessary to teach everything the students needed. Therefore, his teachers encouraged him to take charge of his own learning outside of class.

During his time at school, Bandura came to realize that knowledge is something unstable, that it changes with the passage of time.either because new findings are discovered or because information becomes obsolete.

However, he also saw that the tools he the tools he had acquired for researching on his own were very useful for him to keep updating himself over the years. to keep up to date over the years. It is possible that this influenced his adult opinion about the importance of the student in his own educational process.

2. University education

Although Bandura originally intended to study biology, he ultimately chose to pursue his undergraduate studies in psychology, specifically at the University of British Columbia.

Albert Bandura's behavior during his university years is somewhat surprising. He liked to go several hours before classes started at his university and, out of boredom, decided to sign up for several extra subjects. It was in these subjects that he came into contact with the science of human behavior, which fascinated him.and became fascinated by it.

It took him only three years to finish his university studies, graduating in 1949 and, later, he decided to study for a Master's degree in clinical psychology at the University of Iowa, in the United States, obtaining his degree in 1952.

Professional life

After completing his master's degree and obtaining his doctorate some time later, Albert Bandura was offered a job at the University of Iowa. was offered a job at Stanford University, where he remained for the rest of his life.He has remained there for the rest of his life and, to this day, is still a professor, albeit emeritus.

During his early days as a professor at the institution, the psychologist focused on delivering his classes in the most efficient way as well as initiating research on adolescent aggression.

As time went by, he acquired a deeper insight into imitative behaviorHe formulated hypotheses and theories on aspects such as behavioral imitation, either with or without rewards or punishments after the action had been performed.

These early interests in these aspects were gradually transformed into what is perhaps Albert Bandura's best known theory, the theory of social learning.

The Bobo Dummy: social learning theory

The Bobo doll experiment is probably Albert Bandura's most famous research on imitation behavior.

This research was carried out in 1961 and consisted of having several children watch a movie and others not. The film showed several adults physically and verbally assaulting an inflatable doll called Bobo. The children who had seen the film and those who had not were then taken to a room where Bobo was located. The children who had seen the video behaved similarly to how adults had behaved, 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 only by the presence of rewards and punishments, not by simple imitation behaviors without any reward.

Thus, children imitated adults, children imitated adults without being given anything in return.. Vicarious learning was formally demonstrated and, through this experiment, Bandura was able to elaborate his well-known theory of social learning.

The theory of social learning tries to understand how the acquisition of knowledge, beliefs, attitudes and ways of thinking of the person with respect to the social environment takes place. The premise underlying 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 context.

As we have already mentioned, the general view held in psychology in the middle of the last century, especially in North America, was behaviorist, arguing that learning was a process that was the result of a series of actions that were rewarded or punished.

But Bandura showed the opposite, that learning was rather the result of the child's imitation of peers, parents and other adults doing certain actions. and other adults doing certain actions. This led to the inclusion in behavior of a whole behavioral repertoire seen in their immediate social environment, as well as acquiring the same ways of seeing the world and relating to it. All this without the need for reinforcement.

Although it should be noted that reinforcement and punishment are important aspects in the acquisition of certain behaviors, it should not be assumed that all learning will be based on conditioning. Thus, this theory has served as a bridge between this theory has served as a bridge between behaviorism and cognitivism, with the understanding that there are some learners who learn by doing.understanding that there is some learning that does work on the basis of being conditioned and others that occur by 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, the theory of social learning argues that higher mental processes should not be left out of the picture.The individual can actually process the information regardless of whether or not there are reinforcers that invite replication of the behavior.

Not all learning is observable

According to Bandura's research and that of several of his followers, not all learning has to be manifested externally immediately after it has been acquired..

Actions such as observation, reflection and decision making, although invisible, are very important in learning and can lead to 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 his or her behaviors without or inhibit their behaviors without the need to be the one who is receiving the punishments or rewards for having carried them out. for having carried it out.

By observing how others behave and how they are benefited or harmed by it, a person can change his or her behavior based on what he or she has seen.

This is where the concept of vicarious reinforcement becomes important, i.e., some kind of beneficial or otherwise detrimental factor that motivates to perform 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 totally given way and without participating in the process.

On the contrary, the person makes a series of changes in his beliefs, attitudes and ideas that he can use to change his environment. Thus, both learner and environment present a reciprocal relationship.and mutually modifying each other.

Albert Bandura and his relationship with behaviorism

There are many people, and even books specialized in psychology, who relate the figure of Albert Bandura with that of behaviorism. However, it must be said that this author has always considered that his point of view does not coincide with all the ideas defended by behaviorist psychologists.

In fact, in his early days, 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 makes use of behaviorist terms, such as stimulus and response.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 in the world, and among all psychologists, both living and dead, being in fourth place, only behind B. F. 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", which began in the late 1960s.which began at the end of the 60's, affecting multiple fields of psychology.

He has written several books, among which the following stand 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 by vicarious learning. Also, and by no means to be omitted, is his work Social Learning Theoryof 1977, in which he explained in great detail his vision of this type of learning.

Among the honors that this psychologist has been able to boast have been to be the president of the APA in 1974He has also received two awards from this same association in 1980 and 2004 for his scientific contribution.

Bibliographical references:

• Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
• Bandura, A. (1999b). Moral disengagement in the perpetration of inhumanities. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 3, 193-209.
• Bandura, A. (2001). Social cognitive theory: An agentic perspective. Annual Review of Psychology, 52, 1-26.
• Bandura, A., & Walters, R. H. (1959). Adolescent aggression. New York: Ronald Press.