Albert Bandura

Daniel Alberto Vogel

Family Albert Bandura was born December 4, 1925, in the small

town of Mundare in northern Alberta, Canada.  His family was of Eastern European descent. He was the

youngest child and the only boy of six children. Both of his parents had immigrated to Canada when they were both adolescents; his father from Krakow, Poland, and his mother from Ukraine.

Childhood and Education He was educated in a small elementary and high school in one,

with minimal resources, yet that had a remarkable success rate. Due to the shortage of teachers and resources, learning was left

largely to the students' own initiative.  Although the school was severely limited students achieved to graduate, almost all of whom went on to attend universities throughout the world.

After School Life After high school, he worked for one summer filling

holes on the Alaska Highway in the Yukon. After high school graduation, and in search of a benign

and intellectually spirited climate, Bandura went westward to the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Bandura's choice of studding psychology as a career came about by chance.

Why did he study Psychology? Bandura took the psychology class, became fascinated

and decided to concentrate on it. Within three years (in 1949), he graduated with the Bolocan Award in psychology. The impact of his apparition into the world of psychology would influence his theorizing later.

After life Bandura grew depending only on himself, this

contributed to Bandura's later emphasis on the importance of personal agency.

When it came time to apply for graduate study Bandura chose Iowa where he got his Ph.D degree.

He was offered a position at Stanford University. Bandura accepted and continued teaching for many more years.

Early Studies Bandura’s first studies were about behaviorism: All things which organisms do including acting, thinking

and feeling can and should be regarded as behaviors. He suggested that environment causes behavior, but

behavior causes environment as well. this is reciprocal determinism:  The world and a person’s behavior cause each other.

His first research was about

adolescent aggression but he will

later carry other experiments as

well

Adolescent Aggression It was during his studies on adolescent aggression that

Bandura became increasing interested in vicarious learning, modeling, and imitation.

This resulted in his first book, Adolescent Aggression, in 1959.

Bobo Doll Experiment Having gained a better sense of how people learn by

observation, Bandura extended this work to abstract modeling of rule-governed behavior.

His results made him conduct in 1961 an experiment known as the Bobo doll experiment.

Bandura hoped that the experiment would prove that aggression can be explained, at least in part, by social learning theory.

By

Bobo Doll Experiment The method used was:

36 boys and 36 girls from a nursery school ranging in age between 3 and 6. Were split in to 3 groups of 24.

2 groups would were put into an aggressive model scenario with 1 group in a same-sex adult model and one group in

a different-sex adult model. The final group would be used as a control group - non-

aggressive model scenario.

Steps Followed Child exposed to scenario

One child and one grown adult seated in opposite sites of a room

Each had toys suited for their ages. Child has stickers and appealing activities where as the adult had a bobo doll and a mallet. “Experimenter explained to the child that the toys in the adult corner were only for the adult to play with”.

VS

Steps Followed Scenario 1

the adult in the aggressive model scenario would attack the Bobo doll by hitting it in different ways and using strong words such as sockeroo.

Scenario 2 The non-aggressive adult model simply played with the

small toys for the entire 10 minute-period. In this situation, the Bobo doll was completely ignored.

Toys in The Experiment

Aggressive Non - Aggressive

In scenario 3 the kids were left alone for 20 minutes and had to chose between this toys to play with.

A study of Aggression. The Bobo Doll Experiment

Bobo Doll Experiment Judges watched the behavior of each child through a

one way mirror. Recorded measures based on physical and verbal

aggression He separated the results by gender of role model and

by gender of the child.

Table of experiment results: # of aggressive instances

Boy Girl

Exposed to Agressive model male

104 36.3

Exposed to Agressive model female

48.4 57.7

Verbal Aggresive instances 17 15.7

Total aggressive instances 270 128

Experiments Results Children who viewed violent models subsequently displayed forms of

aggression towards the Bobo doll whereas control children rarely, if ever, did so.

Demonstrated that children could learn new patterns of behavior vicariously without actually performing them or receiving rewards

Children observing aggressive behavior tend to think this behavior is acceptable, in consequence they are more likely to react in an aggressive manner.

Males are more aggressive than Females. Bandura established steps for

modeling process

Shortcoming of the Experiment The experiment has shortcoming: The purpose of a

Bobo doll is to bounce back up when knocked over; to act as a target.

It is possible that the children in the experiment were likely to hit the target Bobo doll for fun because this is what it is designed for, not because they feel aggressive or are imitating aggressive behavior.

= FUN ?

Steps for Modeling Process 1. Attention:  If you are going to learn anything, you have

to be paying attention. Characteristics of the model enhance attention.

2. Retention: You must be able to retain or remember what you have paid attention to. We retain mental images or verbal descriptions.

3. Reproduction: You have to translate the images or descriptions into actual behaviors.

4. Motivation: There must be motivation to imitate. a.  past reinforcement traditional behaviorism.

b.  promised reinforcements (incentives) that we can imagine. c.  vicarious reinforcement seeing the model being reinforced.

Other Research by Bandura Bandura made a research on the mechanisms through

which symbolic modes of modeling produce their widespread social effects.

Social cognitive theory: This theory accords a central role to cognitive, vicarious, self-regulatory and self-reflective processes in human adaptation and change.

Research on self-efficacy, the beliefs in own capabilities. Research on the perceptions of own ability to control what

one perceives as threats to oneself.

Bibliography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobo_doll_experiment http://www.des.emory.edu/mfp/bandurabio.html http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Bandura/bobo.htm http://psychology.about.com/od/profilesofmajorthinkers/

p/bio_bandura.htm http://www.youtube.com/video_id=vdh7MngntnI&t=vjVQa

1PpcFOHOfRdC4kF6Z1pwbXURxnt4otI68pGjkM%3D&fmt=18

http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/bandura.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Bandura