Albert Bandura

Albert Bandura

[Don Saklad]

Albert Bandura
http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/bandura.html
   
                                                        ALBERT BANDURA
                                                               
                                                        1925 - present
                                                               
                                                     Dr. C. George Boeree
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                                                           Biography
                                                               
   Albert Bandura was born December 4, 1925, in the small town of Mundare in northern Alberta, Canada.  He was educated in a
   small elementary school and high school in one, with minimal resources, yet a remarkable success rate.  After high
   school, he worked for one summer filling holes on the Alaska Highway in the Yukon.
   
   He received his bachelors degree in Psychology from the University of British Columbia in 1949.  He  [bandura.jpg] went
   on to the University of Iowa, where he received his Ph.D. in 1952.  It was there that he came under the influence of the
   behaviorist tradition and learning theory.
   
   While at Iowa, he met Virginia Varns, an instructor in the nursing school.  They married and later had two daughters.
   After graduating, he took a postdoctoral position at the Wichita Guidance Center in Wichita, Kansas.
   
   In 1953, he started teaching at Stanford University.  While there, he collaborated with his first graduate student,
   Richard Walters, resulting in their first book, Adolescent Aggression, in 1959.  Sadly, Walters died young in a
   motorcycle accident.
   
   Bandura was president of the APA in 1973, and received the APAs Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions in
   1980.  He continues to work at Stanford to this day.
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                                                            Theory
                                                               
   Behaviorism, with its emphasis on experimental methods, focuses on variables we can observe, measure, and manipulate, and
   avoids whatever is subjective, internal, and unavailable -- i.e. mental.  In the experimental method, the standard
   procedure is to manipulate one variable, and then measure its effects on another.  All this boils down to a theory of
   personality that says that ones environment causes ones behavior.
   
   Bandura found this a bit too simplistic for the phenomena he was observing -- aggression in adolescents -- and so decided
   to add a little something to the formula:  He suggested that environment causes behavior, true; but behavior causes
   environment as well.  He labeled this concept reciprocal determinism:  The world and a persons behavior cause each other.
   
   Later, he went a step further.  He began to look at personality as an interaction among three things:  the environment,
   behavior, and the persons psychological processes.  These psychological processes consist of our ability to entertain
   images in our minds, and language.  At the point where he introduces imagery, in particular, he ceases to be a strict
   behaviorist, and begins to join the ranks of the cognitivists.  In fact, he is often considered a father of the
   cognitivist movement!
   
   Adding imagery and language to the mix allows Bandura to theorize much more effectively than someone like, say, B. F.
   Skinner, about two things that many people would consider the strong suit of the human species:  observational learning
   (modeling) and self-regulation.
   
   Observational learning, or modeling
   
   Of the hundreds of studies Bandura was responsible for, one group stands out above the others -- the bobo doll studies.
   He made of film of one of his students, a young woman, essentially beating up a bobo doll.  In case you dont know, a bobo
   doll is an inflatable, egg-shape balloon creature with a weight in the bottom that makes it bob back up when you knock
   him down.  Nowadays, it might have Darth Vader painted on it, but back then it was simply Bobo the clown.
   
   The woman punched the clown, shouting sockeroo!  She kicked it, sat on it, hit with a little hammer, and so on, shouting
   various aggressive phrases.  Bandura showed his film to groups of kindergartners who, as you might predict, liked it a
   lot.  They then were let out to play.  In the play room, of course, were several observers with pens and clipboards in
   hand, a brand new bobo doll, and a few little hammers.
   
   And you might predict as well what the observers recorded:  A lot of little kids beating the daylights out of the bobo
   doll.  They punched it and shouted sockeroo, kicked it, sat on it, hit it with the little hammers, and so on.  In other
   words, they imitated the young lady in the film, and quite precisely at that.
   
   This might seem like a real nothing of an experiment at first, but consider:  These children changed their behavior
   without first being rewarded for approximations to that behavior!  And while that may not seem extraordinary to the
   average parent, teacher, or casual observer of children, it didnt fit so well with standard behavioristic learning
   theory.  He called the phenomenon observational learning or modeling, and his theory is usually called social learning
   theory.
   
   Bandura did a large number of variations on the study:  The model was rewarded or punished in a variety of ways, the kids
   were rewarded for their imitations, the model was changed to be less attractive or less prestigious, and so on.
   Responding to criticism that bobo dolls were supposed to be hit, he even did a film of the young woman beating up a live
   clown.  When the children went into the other room, what should they find there but -- the live clown!  They proceeded to
   punch him, kick him, hit him with little hammers, and so on.
   
   All these variations allowed Bandura to establish that there were certain steps involved in the modeling process:
   
   1.  Attention.  If you are going to learn anything, you have to be paying attention.  Likewise, anything that puts a
   damper on attention is going to decrease learning, including observational learning.  If, for example, you are sleepy,
   groggy, drugged, sick, nervous, or hyper, you will learn less well.  Likewise, if you are being distracted by competing
   stimuli.
   
   Some of the things that influence attention involve characteristics of the model.  If the model is colorful and dramatic,
   for example, we pay more attention.  If the model is attractive, or prestigious, or appears to be particularly competent,
   you will pay more attention.  And if the model seems more like yourself, you pay more attention.  These kinds of
   variables directed Bandura towards an examination of television and its effects on kids!
   
   2.  Retention.  Second, you must be able to retain -- remember -- what you have paid attention to.  This is where imagery
   and language come in:  we store what we have seen the model doing in the form of mental images or verbal descriptions.
   When so stored, you can later bring up the image or description, so that you can reproduce it with your own behavior.
   
   3.  Reproduction.  At this point, youre just sitting there daydreaming.  You have to translate the images or descriptions
   into actual behavior.  So you have to have the ability to reproduce the behavior in the first place.  I can watch Olympic
   ice skaters all day long, yet not be able to reproduce their jumps, because I cant ice skate at all!  On the other hand,
   if I could skate, my performance would in fact improve if I watch skaters who are better than I am.
   
   Another important tidbit about reproduction is that our ability to imitate improves with practice at the behaviors
   involved.  And one more tidbit:  Our abilities improve even when we just imagine ourselves performing!  Many athletes,
   for example, imagine their performance in their minds eye prior to actually performing.
   
   4.  Motivation.  And yet, with all this, youre still not going to do anything unless you are motivated to imitate, i.e.
   until you have some reason for doing it.  Bandura mentions a number of motives:
   
   a.  past reinforcement, ala traditional behaviorism.
   b.  promised reinforcements (incentives) that we can imagine.
   c.  vicarious reinforcement -- seeing and recalling the model being reinforced.
   
   Notice that these are, traditionally, considered to be the things that cause learning.  Bandura is saying that they dont
   so much cause learning as cause us to demonstrate what we have learned.  That is, he sees them as motives.
   
   Of course, the negative motivations are there as well, giving you reasons not to imitate someone:
   
   d.  past punishment.
   e.  promised punishment (threats).
   d.  vicarious punishment.
   
   Like most traditional behaviorists, Bandura says that punishment in whatever form does not work as well as reinforcement
   and, in fact, has a tendency to backfire on us.
   
   Self-regulation
   
   Self-regulation -- controlling our own behavior -- is the other workhorse of human personality.  Here Bandura suggests
   three steps:
   
   1.  Self-observation.  We look at ourselves, our behavior, and keep tabs on it.
   
   2.  Judgment.  We compare what we see with a standard.  For example, we can compare our performance with traditional
   standards, such as rules of etiquette.  Or we can create arbitrary ones, like Ill read a book a week.  Or we can compete
   with others, or with ourselves.
   
   3.  Self-response.  If you did well in comparison with your standard, you give yourself rewarding self-responses.  If you
   did poorly, you give yourself punishing self-responses.  These self-responses can range from the obvious (treating
   yourself to a sundae or working late) to the more covert (feelings of pride or shame).
   
   A very important concept in psychology that can be understood well with self-regulation is self-concept (better known as
   self-esteem).  If, over the years, you find yourself meeting your standards and life loaded with self-praise and
   self-reward, you will have a pleasant self-concept (high self-esteem).  If, on the other hand, you find yourself forever
   failing to meet your standards and punishing yourself, you will have a poor self-concept (low self-esteem).
   
   Recall that behaviorists generally view reinforcement as effective, and punishment as fraught with problems.  The same
   goes for self-punishment.  Bandura sees three likely results of excessive self-punishment:
   
   a.  compensation -- a superiority complex, for example, and delusions of grandeur.
   b.  inactivity -- apathy, boredom, depression.
   c.  escape -- drugs and alcohol, television fantasies, or even the ultimate escape, suicide.
   
   These have some resemblance to the unhealthy personalities Adler and Horney talk about: an aggressive type, a compliant
   type, and an avoidant type respectively.
   
   Banduras recommendations to those who suffer from poor self-concepts come straight from the three steps of
   self-regulation:
   
   1.  Regarding self-observation -- know thyself!  Make sure you have an accurate picture of your behavior.
   
   2.  Regarding standards -- make sure your standards arent set too high.  Dont set yourself up for failure!  Standards
   that are too low, on the other hand, are meaningless.
   
   3. Regarding self-response -- use self-rewards, not self-punishments.  Celebrate your victories, dont dwell on your
   failures.
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                                                            Therapy
                                                               
   Self-control therapy
   
   The ideas behind self-regulation have been incorporated into a therapy technique called self-control therapy.  It has
   been quite successful with relatively simple problems of habit, such as smoking, overeating, and study habits.
   
   1. Behavioral charts.  Self-observation requires that you keep close tabs on your behavior, both before you begin changes
   and after.  This can involve something as simple as counting how many cigarettes you smoke in a day to complex behavioral
   diaries.  With the diary approach, you keep track of the details, the when and where of your habit.  This lets you get a
   grip on what kinds of cues are associated with the habit:  Do you smoke more after meals, with coffee, with certain
   friends, in certain locations...?
   
   2.  Environmental planning.  Taking your lead from your behavioral charts and diaries, you can begin to alter your
   environment.  For example, you can remove or avoid some of those cues that lead to your bad behaviors:  Put away the
   ashtrays, drink tea instead of coffee, divorce that smoking partner....  You can find the time and place best suited for
   the good alternative behaviors:  When and where do you find you study best?  And so on.
   
   3.  Self-contracts.  Finally, you arrange to reward yourself when you adhere to your plan, and possibly punish yourself
   when you do not.  These contracts should be written down and witnessed (by your therapist, for example), and the details
   should be spelled out very explicitly:  I will go out to dinner on Saturday night if I smoke fewer cigarettes this week
   than last week.  I will do paperwork instead if I do not.
   
   You may involve other people and have them control your rewards and punishments, if you arent strict enough with
   yourself.  Beware, however:  This can be murder on your relationships, as you bite their heads off for trying to do what
   you told them to do!
   
   Modeling therapy
   
   The therapy Bandura is most famous for, however, is modeling therapy.  The theory is that, if you can get someone with a
   psychological disorder to observe someone dealing with the same issues in a more productive fashion, the first person
   will learn by modeling the second.
   
   Banduras original research on this involved herpephobics -- people with a neurotic fear of snakes.  The client would be
   lead to a window looking in on a lab room. In that room is nothing but a chair, a table, a cage on the table with a
   locked latch, and a snake clearly visible in the cage.  The client then watches another person -- an actor -- go through
   a slow and painful approach to the snake.  He acts terrified at first, but shakes himself out of it, tells himself to
   relax and breathe normally and take one step at a time towards the snake.  He may stop in the middle, retreat in panic,
   and start all over.  Ultimately, he gets to the point where he opens the cage, removes the snake, sits down on the chair,
   and drapes it over his neck, all the while giving himself calming instructions.
   
   After the client has seen all this (no doubt with his mouth hanging open the whole time), he is invited to try it
   himself.  Mind you, he knows that the other person is an actor -- there is no deception involved here, only modeling!
   And yet, many clients -- lifelong phobics -- can go through the entire routine first time around, even after only one
   viewing of the actor!  This is a powerful therapy.
   
   One drawback to the therapy is that it isnt easy to get the rooms, the snakes, the actors, etc., together.  So Bandura
   and his students have tested versions of the therapy using recordings of actors and even just imagining the process under
   the therapists direction.  These methods work nearly as well.
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                                                          Discussion
                                                               
   Albert Bandura has had an enormous impact on personality theory and therapy.  His straightforward, behaviorist-like style
   makes good sense to most people.  His action-oriented, problem-solving approach likewise appeals to those who want to get
   things done, rather than philosophize about ids, archetypes, actualization, freedom, and all the many other mentalistic
   constructs personologists tend to dwell on.
   
   Among academic psychologists, research is crucial, and behaviorism has been the preferred approach.  Since the late
   1960s, behaviorism has given way to the cognitive revolution, of which Bandura is considered a part.  Cognitive
   psychology retains the experimentally-oriented flavor of behaviorism, without artificially restraining the researcher to
   external behaviors, when the mental life of clients and subjects is so obviously important.
   
   This is a powerful movement, and the contributors include some of the most important people in psychology today:  Julian
   Rotter, Walter Mischel, Michael Mahoney, and David Meichenbaum spring to my mind.  Also involved are such theorists of
   therapy as Aaron Beck (cognitive therapy) and Albert Ellis (rational emotive therapy).  The followers of George Kelly
   also find themselves in this camp.  And the many people working on personality trait research -- such as Buss and Plomin
   (temperament theory) and McCrae and Costa (five factor theory) -- are essentially cognitive behaviorists like Bandura.
   
   My gut feeling is that the field of competitors in personality theory will eventually boil down to the cognitivists on
   the one side and existentialists on the other.  Stay tuned!
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                                                           Readings
                                                               
   The place to go for Banduras theory is Social Foundations of Thought and Action (1986).  If its a little too dense for
   you, you might want to try his earlier Social Learning Theory(1977), or even Social Learning and Personality Development
   (1963), which he wrote with Walters.  If aggression is what youre interested in, try Aggression:  A Social Learning
   Analysis (1973).
http://www.ship.edu/~cgboeree/bandura.html