Chapter 17 Bandura: Social Cognitive Theory 497His advisor recommended the University of Iowa, so Bandura left Canada for the
United States. He completed a master’s degree in 1951 and a PhD in clinical psy-
chology the following year. Then he spent a year in Wichita completing a post-
doctoral internship at the Wichita Guidance Center. In 1953, he joined the faculty
at Stanford University where, except for 1 year as Fellow at the Center for
Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, he has remained.
Most of Bandura’s early publications were in clinical psychology, dealing
primarily with psychotherapy and the Rorschach test. Then, in 1958, he collabo-
rated with the late Richard H. Walters, his first doctoral student, to publish a paper
on aggressive delinquents. The following year, their book, Adolescent Aggression
(1959), appeared. Since then, Bandura has continued to publish on a wide variety
of subjects, often in collaboration with his graduate students. His most influential
books are Social Learning Theory (1977), Social Foundations of Thought and
Action (1986), and Self-Efficacy: The Exercise of Control (1997).
Bandura has held more than a dozen offices in prestigious scientific societies,
including president of the American Psychological Association (APA) in 1974,
president of the Western Psychological Association in 1980, and honorary president
of the Canadian Psychological Association in 1999. In addition, he has received
more than a dozen honorary degrees from prestigious universities throughout the
world. Other honors and awards include the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1972, the
Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award from Division 12 (Clinical) of APA in
the same year, the Award for Distinguished Scientific Contribution from the APA
in 1980, and the Distinguished Scientist Award of the Society of Behavior Medicine.
He was elected fellow, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, in 1980. In addi-
tion, he has won the Distinguished Contribution Award from the International
Society for Research on Aggression; the William James Award of the American
Psychological Science for outstanding achievements in psychological science; the
Robert Thorndike Award for Distinguished Contribution of Psychology to Educa-
tion, American Psychological Association; and the 2003–2004 James McKeen
Cattell Fellow Award from the American Psychological Society. He has also been
elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and to the Institute of
Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. Beginning in 2004, the American
Psychology Society, in partnership with Psy Chi—The National Honor Society in
Psychology—began awarding an outstanding psychology graduate student with the
Albert Bandura Graduate Research Award. Bandura currently holds the David Starr
Jordan Professorship of Social Science in Psychology at Stanford University.
Learning
One of the earliest and most basic assumptions of Bandura’s social cognitive the-
ory is that humans are quite flexible and capable of learning a multitude of atti-
tudes, skills, and behaviors and that a good bit of those learnings are a result of
vicarious experiences. Although people can and do learn from direct experience,
much of what they learn is acquired through observing others. Bandura (1986)
stated that “if knowledge could be acquired only through the effects of one’s own
actions, the process of cognitive and social development would be greatly retarded,
not to mention exceedingly tedious” (p. 47).