Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

50 The Praeger Handbook of Education and Psychology
academic success; these early experiences instilled in Bandura the importance of self-direction
and motivation in learning. These themes are emphasized in his social cognitive theory.
Bandura also recognizes in his theory the ability of individuals to react to chance encounters
and fortuitous events in ways that can meaningfully alter their life course. Bandura’s decision
to major in psychology resulted from his reaction to one such event. He entered undergraduate
school at the University of British Columbia and enrolled in an introductory psychology course
because it fit an early morning time slot that he needed for his class schedule. Once in the class,
he loved it and decided to major in psychology. Before taking the psychology course, he had
intended to major in the biological sciences.
After receiving his bachelor’s degree in 1949, Bandura attended graduate school at the University
of Iowa. He received his Master of Arts degree in 1951 and his PhD in 1952; both degrees
were in clinical psychology. He accepted a faculty position at Stanford University in California
in 1953. He remained at Stanford for the entirety of his career.
One of Bandura’s earliest projects at Stanford involved the study of hyperaggression in male
adolescents from well-to-do and seemingly well-functioning households. He hypothesized that
the hyperaggressive adolescents were modeling the hostile behavior of their parents. Although
the parents did not allow their sons to display aggression in their homes, they encouraged
aggressive behavior in school by telling the adolescents to physically defend themselves during
disputes. When these adolescents got in trouble at school for their aggressive displays, their
parents typically sided with them against the school administrators. Bandura hypothesized that
the adolescents learned their aggressive behavior by imitating their parents’ aggression. He further
hypothesized that even though the adolescents were punished for behaving aggressively at home,
their observation of their parents’ aggression was a more powerful influence on their behavior
than was the punishment. His research findings were important because they provided evidence
against the popular Freudian assumption that parental punishment would discourage aggression in
children. Bandura’s work with aggressive adolescents demonstrated that observation of parental
behavior was a more powerful influence on child behavior than was punishment. Bandura along
with his first doctoral student, Richard Walters, published his findings in his first book Adolescent
Aggression (1959). His early work on adolescent aggression and parental modeling paved the
way for his concept of observational learning.
Perhaps the most famous study that Bandura conducted on observational learning and aggression
was the Bobo doll study. Bandura showed kindergarten children a film in which one of his
female students physically attacked a Bobo doll, an inflatable balloon that was weighted at the
bottom to make it bob back and forth when struck. After viewing the film, the children were
made to feel frustrated by being placed in a room full of toys that they were not permitted to
touch. Finally, the children were led to a room with a Bobo doll and other toys identical to those
in the film they had viewed. The majority of the kindergartners imitated the aggressive behavior
they viewed in the film; almost half continued to reproduce this behavior months later. Bandura
conducted many variations on the Bobo doll experiment; each resulted in a reproduction of the
aggressive behavior modeled.
Bandura’s findings from the Bobo doll study dispelled several assumptions about learning
and aggression. At the time he began his studies, many psychologists believed that learning was
simply the result of direct reinforcement. In cases of direct reinforcement, the learner is given
a reward each time the desired behavior is approximated until the desired behavior is achieved.
Bandura’s variations on the Bobo doll experiment demonstrated that learners do not require direct
reinforcement for learning to take place. Rather, learners can receive vicarious reinforcement by
seeing a model rewarded for his or her behavior and change their own behavior as a result.
Recall the example of the older brother and younger sister shopping with their mother; the sister
observed her brother receiving reinforcement (i.e., the toy he was begging for) for his behavior