Albert Bandura
Psychology research papers often require that a student focuses on a particular psychologist. One of the greatest of the 20th Century was Albert Bandura. Paper Masters can custom write a research paper on any aspect of Bandura. A few of the topic areas we suggest for your research paper are:
- Bandura's social learning theory
- Bandura's personal biography
- How other psychologists felt about Bandura's work
- Observational learning today and how it relates to Bandura's original views of social learning
Albert Bandura (b. 1925) is a leading psychologist who first developed social learning theory. Widely regarded as one of the greatest psychologists, alongside Freud, Jung and Piaget, Bandura's career has included professorship at Stanford University and President of the American Psychological Association (APA).
Bandura grew up in Canada, before moving to the United States and earning his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in 1952. His early research studied social modeling in human motivation where he attempted to investigate psychological theory through experimentation.
Bandura's Social Learning Theory
Studying aggression in particular, Bandura developed the social learning theory, where modeling is an important component in acquiring new behaviors. He rejected many of the behaviorist theories of B.F. Skinner, believing instead that many human behaviors are learned by observing other human beings.
With his famous Bobo Doll experiment, Bandura showed that people learn not just from being punished or rewarded by through observing other being punished or rewarded. This is known as observational learning. By the 1980s, he had expanded his thinking and refined it into social cognitive theory, which maintains that the survival of humanity is dependent upon the replication of behaviors. This learning occurs through one of the following:
- Learning through experiences
- Social interaction
- Media influence