Albert Bandura, PhD, didn't set out to be a psychologist: He chose his first psychology class simply because it filled a gap in his schedule. Now 90, Bandura is often described as the greatest psychologist alive today. A 2002 survey ranked him behind only Sigmund Freud, B.F. Skinner and Jean Piaget on the list of the most eminent figures in the discipline of psychology.
President Barack Obama recognized Bandura's achievements by naming him as one of nine recipients of the 2015 National Medals of Science, the nation's highest honor for achievement and leadership in advancing science. The award acknowledges Bandura's development of social cognitive theory — a theory that reshaped psychology's understanding of learning — and its widespread application at the individual and societal levels. APA nominated Bandura for the award.
"Social cognitive theory was a transformative change from the behaviorism that was in vogue at the time," says Bandura, the David Starr Jordan professor emeritus of social science in psychology at Stanford University. "This was a marked departure."
In Bandura's most widely known experiment — the Bobo doll study of the early 1960s — he showed preschoolers a film of grown-ups berating and beating a five-foot inflatable doll. When playing later, children who had seen the film clip were more likely to attack the doll, mimicking the adults' behavior. The finding helped overturn then-current notions about learning, showing that observation — rather than trial and error and reward and punishment — is key.
"Probably the most ambitious application of the theory are the long-running serial dramas addressing some of the most urgent global problems," says Bandura, citing television shows focused on literacy, women's rights and sustainability in Africa, Asia and Latin America. "We model people's everyday lives and impediments to change, help them have a vision of a better future and then inform, enable and guide them to take steps to realize that."
The theory also led to Bandura's subsequent work on self-efficacy, or people's belief in their own ability to influence the paths their lives take. Studies by Bandura and others have demonstrated that students who believe in their own ability to learn are more likely to succeed academically, for example — a finding that has formed the basis for interventions designed to boost students' self-efficacy.
Bandura's latest book, "Moral Disengagement: How Good People Can Do Harm and Feel Good about Themselves," was released in December.
The award doesn't just recognize his own achievements but also psychology's contributions to improving people's lives. "Behavioral scientists rarely get these kinds of awards," he says. "This is an opportunity to recognize our discipline, not only myself."
— Rebecca A. Clay