Albert Bandura was born in December, 1925, in Alberta Canada. Bandura attended school in a small school in Alberta which was staffed by two teachers. This situation forced the students to take control of their own education, and be self actualized. He attended college in British Columbia studying psychology because the course time fit in with his commute. However, he became enthralled and pursued it as a career. Bandura attended graduate school at the University of Iowa where he received his M.A. degree in 1951, and his Ph.D in 1952 (how is this possible?).

After receiving his Ph.D. Bandura accepted a job at Stanford where he became a full professor in 1964. He is currently David Starr Jordan Professor of social sciences in psychology, and in addition has served as chairman of the Department of Psychology and was honored by Stanford by being awarded an endowed chair in 1974.

Part of Stanford’s appeal to Bandura was the ability to do collaborative research, and feels lucky to have been able to have worked with renowned researchers. Although his research interests vary, he has made tremendous contributions to the field of social cognitive theory. Social cognitive theory has enabled Bruner to study the effects of self-efficacy, which he states is the “belief in one’s capabilities to organize and execute the sources of action required to manage prospective situations. He contends that it influences the choices we make, the effort we put forth, how long we persist when we confront obstacles (and in the face of failure), and how we feel.” (Bandura, 1986)

Another aspect of the social learning theory is that of aggression. He believed that individuals, especially children, learn aggressive responses from observing others, either personally or through the media or environment (online). One of his most famous experiments, the Bobo doll experiment, where he had a child witness a model aggressively attacking a plastic clown called the Bobo doll. Children would watch a video where a model would aggressively hit a doll and... “the model plummels it on the head with a mallet, hurls it down, sits on it, and punches it on the nose repeatedly, kick it across the room, fling it in the air and bombard it with balls...”(Bandura, 1972, p.9) After the video children were placed in a room with attractive toys, but they could not touch them. The process of retention had occurred. Therefore the children became angry and frustrated. The children were brought to another room where there were identical toys used in the Bobo video. The motivation phase was in occurrence. Bandura and many other researchers found that 88% of the children imitated the aggressive behavior. Eight months later 40% of the same children repeated the violent behavior observed in the Bobo doll experiment.