Feist−Feist: Theories of
Personality, Seventh
EditionV. Learning Theories 16. Bandura: Social
Cognitive Theory(^486) © The McGraw−Hill
Companies, 2009
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 psychology the
following year. Then he spent a year in Wichita completing a postdoctoral internship
at the Wichita Guidance Center. In 1953, he joined the faculty at Stanford Univer-
sity where, except for 1 year as Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Be-
havioral Sciences, he has remained.
Most of Bandura’s early publications were in clinical psychology, dealing pri-
marily with psychotherapy and the Rorschach test. Then, in 1958, he collaborated
with the late Richard H. Walters, his first doctoral student, to publish a paper on ag-
gressive delinquents. The following year, their book, Adolescent Aggression(1959),
appeared. Since then, Bandura has continued to publish on a wide variety of sub-
jects, 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, pres-
ident 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 Distin-
guished 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 Soci-
ety for Research on Aggression; the William James Award of the American Psycho-
logical Science for outstanding achievements in psychological science; the Robert
Thorndike Award for Distinguished Contribution of Psychology to Education, Amer-
ican 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 Na-
tional 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 Grad-
uate 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 theory
is that humans are quite flexible and capable of learning a multitude of attitudes,
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 men-
tion exceedingly tedious” (p. 47).
480 Part V Learning Theories