Albert Bandura and social learning theory

Albert Bandura was born on December 4, 1925 in Mundare, Canada. He is most famous as the psychologist who developed such significant theories as the social learning theory, social cognitive theory and self-efficacy theory. He is graduate of the University of British Columbia (B.A., M.A.) and the University of Iowa (Ph.D.).

Bandura spent most of his career as a faculty member in the Department of Psychology at Stanford University. Bandura's career began with a focus on the role of social modeling in human motivation, action and thought, providing significant insight into the areas of social learning and the study of aggressive behavior and the important role that modeling plays in shaping human behavior.

Bandura's next major area of research was a comprehensive investigation of the process modeling plays in alleviating various phobic disorders. During this research, he discovered that changes in both behavior and fear arousal were limited by the self-efficacy beliefs that the phobic individual maintained about their own ability to overcome their phobia. This led to Bandura's national research into the role of self-referent thought as applied to psychological functioning.

In the nineteen eighty's, Bandura turned his studies to social cognitive theory of human functioning in relation to the role of cognitive, self-regulatory, self-reflective and vicarious processes in the ability of humans to adapt and change.

Bandura's most important contributions to the field of psychology are his social learning and social cognitive theories. Social cognitivism is defined as being a learning theory based on the idea that people essentially learn by watching others do things. In other words, the human thought process is central to developing, and thus understanding, an individual's personality. The central theories of social cognitivism include: 1) People learn by observing others; 2) Learning is an internal process that may or may not change behavior; 3) People behave in certain ways to reach goals; 4) Behavior is self-directed; and 5) Reinforcement and punishment have unpredictable and indirect effects on both behavior and learning. (Ormrod, 2003).

According to the research of Bandura, it was his discovery that teachers play a significant role in a child's learning acquisition as teachers are the main source of modeling for both material objectives and the secondary, or underlying, curriculum of instilling proper virtues. With this understanding, it is important that teachers focus on building high self-efficacy levels in students by awarding student accomplishments.

Central to this theory are the concepts of categorization and association. Categorization is the natural act of humans to attempt to group people and things on the basis of easily identifiable characteristics like gender, age and race. This is the basis to stereotyping and often happens subconsciously. Association is the secondary act to categorization, or those particular traits that humans naturally place together and thus associate with a particular group. These two concepts influence how humans view a model. Since humans learn primarily from watching others, how that model is perceived effects the influence and overall role the model will play.