Albert Bandura’s Theory of Personality

New aspects of learning and self-concept constituted this theory.

The psychologist and theorist Albert Bandura was born in Canada at the end of 1925. About to enter the 1950s, Bandura graduated in psychology from Columbia University.

Given his brilliant record, in 1953 he began teaching at the prestigious Stanford University. Years later, Bandura served as president of the APA. president of the APA (American Psychological Association).

His theories are still valid today, and in Psychology and Mind we have already echoed some of them:

• "Albert Bandura's Social Learning Theory."

• "Albert Bandura's Theory of Self-Efficacy".

The Theory of Personality: background and context

The behaviorism is a school of psychology that stresses the importance of experimental methods and tries to analyze observable and measurable variables. Therefore, it also tends to reject all aspects of psychology that cannot be grasped, all that is subjective, internal and phenomenological.

The usual procedure used by the experimental method is the manipulation of certain variables, in order to subsequently assess the effects on another variable. As a result of this conception of the human psyche and of the tools available to evaluate personality, the Albert Bandura's Theory of Personality gives greater relevance to the environment as the genesis and key modulator of each individual's behavior.

A new concept: the reciprocal determinism

During his early years as a researcher, Albert Bandura specialized in the study of the phenomenon of aggression in adolescents. He soon realized that, although observable elements were crucial in establishing a solid and scientific basis for the study of certain phenomena, and without renouncing the principle that it is the environment that causes human behavior, there was also another reflection to be made.

The environment causes behavior, certainly, but behavior also causes the environment. This rather innovative concept was called reciprocal determinismmaterial reality (social, cultural, personal) and individual behavior cause each other.

Psychological processes complete the equation (from behaviorism to cognitivism).

Months later, Bandura went a step further and began to assess personality as a complex interaction between three elements: environment, behavior and individual psychological processes. individual psychological processes. These psychological processes include the human capacity to retain images in the mind and aspects related to language.

This is a key aspect to understand Albert Bandura, since by introducing this last variable he abandons the orthodox behaviorist postulates and starts to approach the cognitivism. In fact, Bandura is currently considered one of the fathers of cognitivism.

By adding imagination and language aspects to his understanding of human personality, Bandura starts from much more complete elements than pure behaviorists, such as B.F. Skinner. Thus, Bandura will analyze crucial aspects of the human psyche: the learning by observation (also called modeling) and self-regulation.

Observational learning (modeling)

Of the numerous studies and research carried out by Albert Bandura, there is one that was (and continues to be) the subject of special attention. The studies on the pacifier doll. The idea came from a video recorded by one of his students, where a girl was repeatedly hitting an inflatable egg-shaped doll called "Bobo".

The girl was mercilessly beating the doll, while shouting "stupid!". She would hit it, both with punches and with a hammer, and accompanied these aggressive actions with insults. Bandura showed the video to a group of children at a day care center, who enjoyed the video. Later, after the video session was over, the children were taken to a playroom, where a new goofy doll and small hammers were waiting for them. Obviously, Bandura and his collaborators were also in the room, analyzing the behavior of the offspring.

The children It didn't take them long to grab the hammers and start hitting the pacifier, mimicking the insults of the girl in the video.. Thus, to the cry of "stupid!", they copied all the 'misdeeds' they had seen minutes before.

Although the conclusions of this experiment may not seem very surprising, they did serve to confirm several things: the children changed their behavior without any reinforcement directed at the behavior. This will not be an extraordinary reflection for any parent or teacher who has spent time with children, but it did, nonetheless, create a schism with respect to theories that have been taught in the past. created a schism with respect to behavioral learning theories..

Bandura called this phenomenon "observational learning" (or modeling). You can learn about his learning theory through this summary:

"Albert Bandura's Social Learning Theory".

Modeling: analyzing its components

Attention, retention, reproduction and motivation

The systematic study and variations of the pacifier test allowed Albert Bandura to establish the different steps involved in the modeling process. different steps involved in the modeling process.

1. Attention

If you want to learn anything, you must pay attention. Also, anything that hinders you from paying as much attention as possible will result in worse learning.

For example, if you are trying to learn something but your mental state is not the most suitable (because you are half asleep, you feel sick or you have taken drugs), your degree of acquisition of new knowledge will be affected. The same happens if you have distracting elements.

The object for which we pay attention also has certain characteristics that can attract more (or less) our attentional focus.

Retention

No less important than paying adequate attention, is being able to retain (remembering, memorizing) what we are studying or trying to learn. It is at this point where language and imagination play an important role: we retain what we have seen in the form of images or verbal descriptions.

Once we have stored the knowledge, images and/or descriptions in our mind, we are able to consciously recall that data, so that we can reproduce what we have learned and even repeat it, modulating our behavior.

3. Reproduction

When we reach this step, we must be able to decode the retained images or descriptions so that they can be used to change our behavior in the present. in the present.

It is important to understand that, when learning to do something that requires a mobilization of our behavior, we must be able to reproduce the behavior. For example, you may spend a week watching ice skating videos, but not even be able to put on skates without falling on the ground. You don't know how to skate!

But if you do know how to ice skate, it is likely that repeated viewing of videos of better skaters performing jumps and spins will improve your skills.

It is also important, with respect to reproduction, to know that our ability to imitate behaviors gradually improves the more we practice the skills involved in a given task. In addition, our abilities tend to improve simply by imagining ourselves performing the behavior. This is what is known as "Mental Training" and is widely used by sportsmen and athletes to improve their performance.

4. Motivation

The motivation is a key aspect when it comes to learning the behaviors we want to imitate. We must have reasons and motives for wanting to learn something, otherwise it will be more difficult to focus attention, retain and reproduce these behaviors.

According to Bandura, the most frequent reasons for which we want to learn somethingare:

• Past reinforcementPast reinforcement, such as classical behaviorism. Something that we have liked to learn before has more chances to like it now.

• Promised reinforcement (incentives)all those future benefits that push us to want to learn.

• Vicarious reinforcementwhich gives us the possibility of retrieving the model as reinforcement.

These three motives are linked to what psychologists have traditionally considered as the elements that "cause" learning. Bandura explains that such elements are not so much the "causes" as the "motives" for wanting to learn. A subtle but relevant difference.

Of course, the negative motivations can also exist, and they push us not to imitate certain behavior:

• Past punishment

• Promised punishment (threats)

• Vicarious punishment

Self-regulation: another key to understanding the human personality

The self-regulation (i.e., the ability to control, regulate and shape our own behavior), is the other fundamental key to personality. In his theory, Bandura points to the following three steps towards self-regulation:

Self-observation

We perceive ourselves, we evaluate our behavior and this serves to establish a coherent corpus (or not) of what we are and what we do.

2. Judgment

We compare our behaviors and attitudes with certain standards. standards. For example, we tend to compare our actions with culturally acceptable ones. Or we are also able to create new acts and habits, such as going for a run every day. In addition, we can instill in ourselves the value of competing with others, or even with ourselves.

3. Self-response

If we compare ourselves to our own standards and do well, we give ourselves positive reward responses, we give positive reward responses to ourselves. In case the comparison creates discomfort (because we do not conform to what we believe would be correct or desirable), we give ourselves punitive responses. These responses can range from the most purely behavioral (staying late at work or apologizing to the boss), to more emotional and covert aspects (feeling ashamed, self-defense, etc.).

One of the important elements in psychology that serves to understand the process of self-regulation is the self-concept (also known as self-esteem). If we look back and perceive that we have acted throughout our lives more or less in accordance with our values and have lived in an environment that has conferred rewards and praise on us, we will have a good self-concept and therefore a high self-esteem. Conversely, if we have been unable to live according to our values and standards, we are likely to have a poor self-concept, or low self-esteem.

To recapitulate

Albert Bandura and his Personality Theory based on the behavioral and cognitive aspects involved in learning and behavior acquisition had a great impact on personality theories and psychological therapy. His theses, which were based on behaviorist postulates but embraced innovative elements that allowed a better explanation of the phenomena concerning human personality, earned him wide recognition in the scientific community.

His approach to personality was not merely theoretical but prioritized action and the solution of practical problems. prioritized action and the solution of practical problems, especially those linked, above all, to learning in childhood and adolescence, but also to other fields of great importance.

Scientific psychology seemed to have found in behaviorism, at the time when Bandura was taking his first steps as a teacher, a privileged place within the academic world, where the basis of knowledge is extracted by means of measurable studies. Behaviorism was the approach preferred by the vast majority, since it was based on the observable and left aside the mental or phenomenological aspects, which were not observable and therefore did not fit the scientific method.

However, at the end of the 1960s and thanks to leading figures such as Albert Bandura, behaviorism gave way to the "cognitive revolution". The cognitive psychology combines the experimental and positivist orientation of behaviorism, but without sequestering the researcher in the study of externally observable behaviors, since it is precisely the mental life of people that must always remain in the orbit of what psychology tries to investigate.