Albert Bandura

Social Cognitive Theory*
Originator of Theory:
Albert Bandura, Ph.D. Bandura obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Iowa in 1952. In 1953, Bandura was offered a position at Standford University, and he is still there on faculty today.
Approximate Year of Origin: The Social Cognitive Theory (SCT) stemmed from the Social Learning Theory (SLT), which has a rich historical background dating back to the late 1800 's. Albert Bandura first began publishing his work on SLT in the early 1960 's. In 1986, Bandura officially launched the SCT with his book Social Foundations of Thought and Action: A Social Cognitive Theory.
Circumstances that led to the development of the Theory: The SCT has its origins in the discipline of psychology, with its early foundation being laid by behavioral and social psychologists. The SLT evolved under the umbrella of behaviorism, which is a cluster of psychological theories intended to explain why people and animals behave the way that they do. Behaviorism, introduced by John Watson in 1913, took an extremely mechanistic approach to understanding human behavior. According to Watson, behavior could be explained in terms of observable acts that could be described by stimulus-response sequences (Crosbie-Brunett and Lewis, 1993; Thomas, 1990). Also central to behaviorist study was the notion that contiguity between stimulus and response determined the likelihood that learning would occur.
Since this time, the stimulus-response pathway has been a point of debate among behaviorists. This debate stems over whether there exists some mediating factor between stimulus and response that regulates behavior. Opinions on this have been divided over whether behavior is primarily governed consequently - by rewards or punishments, or antecedently - through feedback. Various mediating variables have been proposed throughout the history of behaviorism, including William James ' habit (later adopted by Watson), Freud 's instinct, and Tolman 's cognitions

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