Albert Bandura: The Man, The Myth, The Legend

 

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“Self-belief doesn’t necessarily ensure success, but self-disbelief assuredly spawns failure”

                      Albert Bandura.

 Albert Bandura was a Canadian American Psychologist. He was born on the 4^th of December, 1925 in Mundare, Alberta, Canada.

   He is the youngest of six children, born to parents of eastern European descent. His father was a native of Poland while his mom was from Ukraine, they both immigrated to Canada as adolescents.

ACADEMIC LIFE

  Albert Bandura’s life as a psychologist began in a weird way. He started out as a biological science major and his interest in psychology formed by accident. This happened when he took a psychology course in order to pass the time and became passionate about the subject.

 He pursued a bachelor’s degree at the university of British Columbia and graduated in 1949, clinching the prestigious Bolcan Award in Psychology, that is usually awarded to the most outstanding student in Psychology. He proceeded to obtain his master’s degree (1951) and a doctorate in clinical psychology(1952) both from the university of Iowa.

BANDURA’S INFLUENCE ON THE FIELD OF PSYCHOLOGY

     Psychologist Albert Bandura pioneered the study of social learning and self-efficacy. A 2002 survey ranked him as the fourth most influential psychologist in the 20^th century. The central focus of Albert Badura's social learning theory and self- efficacy is stated below:

1)      Social Learning Theory: this theory focuses on the importance observing, modelling and imitating the behaviors, attitudes and emotional reactions of others. He emphasized that behavior is learned from the environment through observation.

    To prove this fact, he carried out the famous bobo doll study. He believed that children observe models, encode their behaviors and at a later time imitate the behavior they have observed. Before a child can replicate this observed behavior, firstly, the child is more likely to imitate a behavior modeled by people of the same gender.

   Secondly, the consequences (reward or punishment) following the behavior will determine if the behavior will be replicated.

      Self-efficacy theory: he coined the term self-efficacy in 1977, which means how well one can execute courses of action required to deal with prospective situations. In simpler terms, it talks about how you handle various situations especially stressors.

   Self-efficacy develops from these four main sources of influence. 

First, your previous performance will determine how well you handle a new challenge. If you were successful in the past, it builds a robust belief in your personal efficacy, but failures undermine it. 

  Second, vicarious experiences. That is, role models, play a huge part in developing self-efficacy. Bandura posits that, “Seeing people similar to oneself succeed by sustained effort raises observers' beliefs that they too possess the capabilities to master comparable activities to succeed."

  Third, social persuasion, which is the positive or negative feedback you receive while undertaking a complex task persuades a person to either believe or doubt that they have the skills and capabilities to succeed. 

And lastly, emotional and physiological states. Your emotional, physical and psychological well-being of a person can influence how they feel about their personal abilities in a particular situation. That is, you are more likely to doubt your abilities when you are tired, stressed or depressed unlike when you are happy or energized.

   In the early stages of our student career (part 1), when we were taught learning processes, Bandura's experiment caught most of our attention. This is because his theories were something we could easily relate with. Today Psychoscope honours this recently departed Legend, Rest in Power Albert Bandura (December 4, 1925- July 28, 2021).

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Reference:

Albert Bandura | Biography, Theory, Experiment, & Facts By Jeannette L

Albert Bandura by Wikipedia

Albert Bandura Biography by Kendra Cherry 
Albert Bandura's Social Learning Theory | Simply Psychology by 
Self-Efficacy Theory by Gabriel Lopez-