Albert Bandura

Albert Bandura (1925~present)

 * Born: Mundare, Alberta, Canada in 1925.

Where did they get their PhD?

 * He received both his Masters in 1951 and PhD in 1952 in the field of Psychology from the University of Iowa which at that time focused very heavily on behaviorism.

Where have they taught / worked?

 * Dr Bandura did a postgraduate internship at the Wichita Guidance Center.
 * Dr Bandura took a temporary teaching position at Stanford in 1953 and continues to teach there to this day. For over half a century Dr Bandura has been shaping the minds of students in the psychology department at Stanford!

What things are they best known for?

 * Bandura found many things in behaviorism that did not coincide with his research findings. This lead him to posit new theories about how we learn. Some of his most well known contributions are as follows:
 * Adolsecent Aggression - The Bobo Doll.
 * Social Learning Theory which he then revised into Social Cognition.
 * Self-Efficacy - which is the awareness one has about their performance.

What are their three most important publications?

 * Most famous books:
 * Adolescent Aggression (1959) and Aggression: A Social Learning Analysis (1973)
 * Social Learning Theory (1977) and Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A social cognitive theory (1986)
 * Self-Efficacy in changing societies (1995) and Self-Efficacy: The exercise of control (1997)


 * The page of references for published works is over 23 pages long and that was with 2002 being the last publication date. More articles were in press at that time and there have likely been more published at the date of this report.

Who are their most frequent collaborators?

 * Bandura mostly publishes alone although is position as a professor at Stanford does allow for frequent collaboration with faculty and students alike. During his early career as a professor, Bandura worked closely with a doctoral student named Richard Walters with whom he published a number of works. He would probably be the closet person as frequent collaborator.

Who are their main philosophical rivals (if any)?

 * Although there did not appear to be any specific rivalry between Bandura and anyone, many of his theories contradicted earlier theorys by Skinner, Hull, and Freud.

What (in)famous / apocryphal stories exist about this person?

 * On his website, Bandura speaks about a time when the utterly dry and mind-numbing readings he was enduring during graduate school drove him and a friend to the golf course. They arrived late for their tee time and were therefore put behind a group of slow-playing but good-looking young women. Bandura states, "They happen to find themselves playing behind a twosome of attractive women golfers. Before long the two twosomes become one foursome and, in the course of events, one of the partners eventually becomes the wife of the graduate golfer." He went on to say, "I met my wife in a sand trap."

A photo (headshot or other is fine)


Retrieved from http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/bandurabio.html on 9/14/2006