COMM 857

Albert Bandura:
Social Cognitive Theory
Presented by Jim Kinneer May 1, 2010

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Theorist Early Life Academic Career Theory Major Premises Comm Media Application

Early Life Born in 1925 in a rural community in Alberta, Canada Parents were immigrants (Poland and Ukraine) Attended school in a eight room school house with modest resources Following high school worked a summer in the Alaskan Yukon which he credits for his interest psychopathology

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Theorist Early Life Academic Career Theory Major Premises Comm Media Application

Academic Career Undergraduate studies at University of British Columbia in Vancouver Masters (1951) and Phd (1952) at Iowa State University Completed Masters and PhD in three years Professor at Stanford University since 1953 Author of over 300 scholarly publications

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Theorist Early Life Academic Career Theory Major Premises Comm Media Application

Social Learning Theory Miller and Dollard(1941) wrote a book entitled Social Learning and Imitation This was a movement forward because they discussed imitation

However, they viewed imitation along traditional behavioristic principles

Bandura intrigued by the idea by the assumptions that learning requires more powerful mode than trial and error. In 1960s, conducted research on modeling, vicarious learning and his version of Social Learning Theory resulted

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Theorist Early Life Academic Career Theory Major Premises Comm Media Application

Social Cognitive Theory Humans can learn by observing and modeling others, especially those that they identify with. Classic Bobo Doll studies demonstrated observational learning and impact on violent behavior in children. Bandura originally called this theory Observational Learning Theory or Social Learning Theory

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Theorist Early Life Academic Career Theory Major Premises Comm Media Application

Bobo Doll Experiments

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Theorist Early Life Academic Career Theory Major Premises Comm Media Application

Bobo Study Key Findings After viewing adults strike and kick a Bobo doll, children would imitate the behavior in another environment Suggests that the violence could be imitated by viewers Results showed 88% of the children imitated aggressive behavior following the viewing of the tape of adults acting aggressively toward the doll 8 months later 40% of the same children reproduced the violent behavior observed in the Bobo doll experiment

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Theorist Early Life Academic Career Theory Major Premises Comm Media Application

Four Key Processes in Social Learning Attention Retention Reproduction Motivation

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Theorist Early Life Academic Career Theory Major Premises Comm Media Application

Social Cognitive Theory

In 1986, Bandura published a book entitled Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory
Expanded Social Learning Theory into a fuller theory of human behavior not just learning Presented the triadic responsibility model

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Theorist Early Life Academic Career Theory Major Premises Comm Media Application

Triadic Responsibility Model

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Theorist Early Life Academic Career Theory Major Premises Comm Media Application

Communications Media Application Television violence and children Advertising Applied to violence in video games Being applied in developing nations to address social issues

Applicable to virtual worlds

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Theorist Early Life Academic Career Theory Major Premises Comm Media Application

References
Bandura, A., Ross, D., & Ross, S. A. (1961). Transmission of aggression through imitation of aggressive models. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 63, 575-582.
Bandura, A. (1986). Social foundations of thought and action: A social cognitive theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Pajares, F. (2004). Albert Bandura: Biographical sketch. Retrieved April 16, 20010 from http://des.emory.edu/mfp/bandurabio.html Zimmerman, B.J. and Schunk, D. H. (2003). Albert Bandura: The scholar and his contributions to educational psychology. In B.J. Zimmerman and D.H. Schunk (Eds.) Educational psychology: A century of contributions (pp. 431-450). Mahwah, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publisher.