For C. George boeree. March 13, 2018
Albert Bandura was born on December 4, 1925 in the small town of Mundare in Northern Alberta, Canada. He was educated in a small elementary school and college in one building, with minimal resources, although with a significant success rate. After graduating from high school, he worked for a summer filling holes on the Alaska Highway in the Yukon.
He completed his BA in Psychology from the University of British Columbia in 1949. He then transferred to the University of Iowa, where he met Virginia Varns, a nursing school instructor. They married and later had two daughters. After his graduation, he assumed a post-doctoral candidacy at the Wichita Guidance Center in Wichita, Kansas.
In 1953, he began teaching at Stanford University. While there, he collaborated with his first graduate student, Richard Walters, resulting in a first book titled Teen Aggression in 1959. sadly, Walters died young in a motorcycle accident.
Bandura was President of the APA in 1973
Behaviorism, with his emphasis on experimental methods, focuses on variables that can be observed, measured and manipulated and rejects everything that is subjective, internal and not available (e.g. the mental). In the experimental method, the standard procedure is to manipulate one variable and then measure its effects on another. All of this leads to a theory of personality that says that one's environment causes our behavior.
Bandura considered that this was a bit simple for the phenomenon he was observing (aggression in adolescents) and therefore he decided to add a little more to the formula: he suggested that the environment causes the behavior; true, but that behavior causes the environment as well. He defined this concept with the name of reciprocal determinism: the world and the behavior of a person cause each other.
Later, he went a step further. He began to consider personality as an interaction between three "things": the environment, behavior and psychological processes of the person. These processes consist of our ability to harbor images in our mind and in language. From the moment he introduces the imagination in particular, he stops being a strict behaviorist and begins to approach the cognocivists. In fact, he is usually considered the father of the cognitive movement.
The addition of imagination and language to the mix allows Bandura to theorize much more effectively than, say for example, B.F. Skinner with Regarding two things that many people consider "the strong core" of the human species: learning by observation (modeling) and self-regulation.
Learning by observation or modeling
Of the hundreds of Bandura studies, one group stands out above the others, the studies of the bobo doll. He made it from a movie by one of his students, where a young student just hit a silly doll. In case you don't know, a goofy doll is an inflatable egg-shaped creature with a certain weight at its base that causes it to wobble when we hit it. Currently they have Darth Vader painted, but at that time he had the clown "Bobo" as the main character.
The young woman hit the doll, screaming "stupidoooo"!. She hit him, sat on top of him, hit him with a hammer and other actions shouting various aggressive phrases. Bandura showed the film to a group of kindergarten children who, as you can imagine, jumped for joy when they saw it. She subsequently let them play. In the game room, of course, there were several observers with pens and folders, a new goofy doll, and some little hammers.
And you can predict what the observers noted: a large chorus of children brazenly beating the silly doll. They beat him yelling "stupidoooo!", They sat on him, they beat him with hammers and so on. In other words, they imitated the young woman from the movie and quite accurately.
This might seem like an experiment with little input at first, but let's consider for a moment: these children changed their behavior without initially reinforcement aimed at exploiting said behaviour! And while this may not seem extraordinary to any parent, teacher, or casual observer of children, it did not fit very well with standard behavioral learning theories. Bandura called the phenomenon learning by observation or modeling, and his theory is usually known as the social theory of learning.
Bandura carried out a large number of variations on the study in question: the model was rewarded or punished in various ways in different ways; children were rewarded for their imitations; the model was exchanged for a less attractive or less prestigious one, and so on. In response to criticism that the goofy doll was meant to be "hit," Bandura even made a movie where a girl hit a real clown. When the children were ushered into the other playroom, they found what they were looking for... a real clown! They proceeded to kick, hit, hammer, etc.
All of these variants allowed Bandura to establish that certain steps involved in the modeling process:
1. Attention. If you are going to learn something, you need to be paying attention. In the same way, anything that supposes a brake on attention will be detrimental to learning, including observational learning. If, for example, you are sleepy, drugged, sick, nervous or even "hyper", you will learn less well. The same happens if you are distracted by a competitive stimulus.
Some of the things that influence attention have to do with the properties 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, we will pay more attention. And if the model looks more like us, we will pay more attention. These types of variables led Bandura towards the examination of television and its effects on children.
2. Retention. Second, we must be able to retain (remember) what we have paid attention to. This is where imagination and language come into play: we save what we have seen the model do in the form of mental images or verbal descriptions. Once "archived", we can resurface the image or description so that we can reproduce it with our own behavior.
3. Reproduction. At this point, we are there daydreaming. We must translate the images or descriptions to the current behavior. Therefore, the first thing we must be able to do is reproduce the behavior. I can spend a whole day watching an Olympic skater do his job and not be able to reproduce his jumps, since I don't know anything about skating! On the other hand, if I could skate, my demonstration would actually improve if I watch better skaters than me.
Another important issue regarding reproduction is that our ability to imitate improves with the practice of the behaviors involved in the task. And one more thing: our abilities improve even just by imagining ourselves doing the behavior! Many athletes, for example, imagine the act they are going to do before carrying it out.
4. Motivation. Even with all this, we still won't do anything unless we are motivated to imitate; that is, unless we have good reasons to do so. Bandura mentions a number of reasons:
- Past reinforcement, like traditional or classical behaviorism.
- Promised reinforcements, (incentives) that we can imagine.
- Vicar Reinforcement, the possibility of perceiving and recovering the model as a reinforcer.
Note that these motives have traditionally been considered as those things that "cause" learning. Bandura tells us that these are not as causative as samples of what we have learned. That is, he considers them more as motives.
Of course negative motivations also exist, giving us reasons not to imitate:
- Past punishment.
- Promised punishment (threats)
- Vicarious punishment.
Like most classical behaviorists, Bandura says that punishment in its different forms does not work as well as reinforcement and, in fact, has a tendency to turn against us.
Self-regulation
Self-regulation (controlling our own behavior) is the other cornerstone of the human personality. In this case, Bandura suggests three steps:
1. Self-observation. We see ourselves, our behavior and we get clues from it.
2. Judgment. We compare what we see with a standard. For example, we can compare our acts with traditionally established ones, such as "rules of etiquette." Or we can create new ones, like "I'll read a book a week." Or we can compete with others, or with ourselves.
3. Auto-responding. If we have done well in comparison to our standard, we give rewarding answers to ourselves. If we do not come out well, we will give ourselves punitive self-responses. These self-responses can range from the most obvious extreme (telling us something mean or working late), to the more covert one (feelings of pride or shame).
A very important concept in psychology that could be well understood with self-regulation is self-concept (better known as self-esteem). If through the years, we see that we have acted more or less in accordance with our standards and have had a life full of rewards and personal praise, we will have a pleasant self-concept (self-esteem high). If, otherwise, we have always seen ourselves as unable to meet our standards and punishing ourselves for it, we will have a poor self-concept (low self-esteem)
Note that behaviorists generally regard reinforcement as effective and punishment as fraught with problems. The same goes for self-punishment. Bandura sees three possible results of excessive self-punishment:
Compensation. For example, a superiority complex and delusions of grandeur.Inactivity. Apathy, boredom, depression.Escape. Drugs and alcohol, television fantasies or even the most radical escape, suicide.
This bears some resemblance to the insane personalities Adler and Horney spoke of; the aggressive type, the submissive type and the avoidant type respectively.
Bandura's recommendations for people suffering from poor self-concepts arise directly from the three steps of self-regulation:
Concerning self-observation. know yourself!. Make sure you have an accurate picture of your behavior.
Concerning the standards. Make sure your standards are not set too high. Do not we embark in a road to failure. However, standards that are too low are meaningless.
Concerning self-response. Use personal rewards, not self-punishment. Celebrate your victories, don't deal with your failures.
Self-control therapy
The ideas behind self-regulation have been incorporated into a therapeutic technique called self-control therapy. It has been quite successful with relatively simple problems with habits such as smoking, overeating, and study habits.
1. Tables (records) of conduct. Self-observation requires us to write down types of behavior, both before we start and after. This act includes things as simple as counting how many cigarettes we smoke in a day until conduct diaries more complex. When using diaries, we take note of the details; the when and where of the habit. This will allow us to have a more concrete vision of those situations associated with our habit: do I smoke more after meals, with coffee, with certain friends, in certain places ???
2. Environmental planning. Having a log and diaries will make it easier for us to take the next step: alter our environment. For example, we can remove or avoid those situations that lead us to misbehavior: removing ashtrays, drinking tea instead of coffee, divorcing our smoking couple... We can find the best time and place to acquire better alternative behaviors: where and when do we realize that we study best? And so on.
3. Self-contracts. Finally, we promise to compensate ourselves when we stick to our plan and to punish ourselves if we don't. These contracts should be written in front of witnesses (by our therapist, for example) and the details should be very specific: "I will go to dinner on Saturday night if I smoke fewer cigarettes this week than previous. If I don't, I'll stay home working. "
We may also invite other people to control our rewards and punishments if we know that we will not be too strict with ourselves. But beware: this can lead to the end of our relationships when we try to brainwash the couple in an attempt to get them to do things the way we would like!
Modeling Therapy
However, the therapy Bandura is best known for is modeling. This theory suggests that if one chooses someone with a psychological disorder and we observe another who is trying to deal with similar problems more productively, the first will learn by imitation of the second.
Bandura's original research on the subject involves working with herpephobics (people with neurotic fears of snakes) The client is led to observe through a glass that he gives to a laboratory. In this space, there is nothing but a chair, a table, a box on the table with a padlock and a snake clearly visible inside. Then the person in question sees another (an actor) approach, slowly and fearfully walking towards the box. At first he acts very scary; He shakes himself several times, tells himself to relax and breathe easy, and takes one step at a time toward the snake. He can stop on the road a couple of times; back off in a panic, and start over. At the end, he reaches the point of opening the box, picks up the snake, sits on the chair and grabs her by the neck; all this while relaxing and giving calm instructions.
After the client has seen all of this (no doubt with his mouth open throughout the observation), he is invited to try it himself. Imagine, he knows the other person is an actor (no disappointment here; just modeling!) And yet many chronically phobic people embark on the entire routine from the very first attempt, even when they have seen the scene only once. This, of course, is a powerful therapy.
One downside of therapy was that it is not so easy to get the rooms, the snakes, the actors, etc., all together. So Bandura and his students tried different versions of the therapy using recordings of actors and even appealed to the imagination of the scene under the tutelage of therapists. These methods worked almost as well as the original.
Albert Bandura had a huge impact on personality theories and therapy. His bold and behaviorist-like style seemed quite logical to most people. His action-oriented, problem-solving approach was welcomed by those who liked action more than philosophizing about the id, archetypes, actualization, freedom, and all the other mentalistic constructs that personologists tend to study.
Within academic psychologists, research is crucial and the behaviorism has been his 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 flavor of the experimental orientation of behaviorism, without artificially retaining the researcher of external behaviors, when precisely the mental life of clients and subjects is so obviously important.
This is a powerful movement, and its contributors include some of the most prominent people in the current psychology: Julian Rotter, Walter Mischel, Michael Mahoney and David Meichenbaum are some of those who come to me To the mind. There are also others dedicated to therapy such as Beck (cognitive therapy) and Ellis (rational-emotional therapy). Followers and later George Kelly are also in this field. And the many other people who are dealing with the study of personality from the point of view of traits, such as Buss and Plomin (temperament theory) and McCrae and Costa (five factor theory) are essentially cognitive behaviorists like Bandura.
My feeling is that the field of competitors in personality theory will eventually lead to cognitive ones on the one hand and existentialists on the other. Let us be on the alert.
Bandura's theory can be found in Social Foundations of Thought and Action (1986) If we think it is too dense for us, we can go to his previous work Social Learning Theory(1977), or even Social Learning and Personality Development(1963), where he writes with Walters. If we are interested in aggression, let's see Aggression: A Social Learning Analysis (1973).
