Albert Bandura

Albert Bandura
Bandura in 2005
Born	(1925-12-04)December 4, 1925 Mundare, Alberta, Canada
Died	July 26, 2021(2021-07-26) (aged 95) Stanford, California, U.S.
Nationality	Canadian American
Education	University of British Columbia (BA) University of Iowa (MA, PhD)
Known for	Social cognitive theory Self-efficacy Social learning theory Bobo doll experiment Human agency Reciprocal determinism
Awards	E. L. Thorndike Award (1999)
Scientific career
Fields	Psychology, Developmental psychology, Educational psychology, Social psychology
Institutions	Stanford University

Albert Bandura (4 December 1925 – 26 July 2021) was a Canadian-American psychologist and professor of social science in psychology at Stanford University, who contributed to the fields of education and to the fields of psychology, e.g. social cognitive theory, therapy, and personality psychology, and influenced the transition between behaviorism and cognitive psychology. Bandura also is known as the originator of the social learning theory, the social cognitive theory, and the theoretical construct of self-efficacy, and was responsible for the theoretically influential Bobo doll experiment (1961), which demonstrated the conceptual validity of observational learning, wherein children would watch and observe an adult beat a doll, and, having learned through observation, the children then beat a Bobo doll.^[1]

A 2002 survey ranked Bandura as the fourth most frequently cited psychologist of all time, behind B. F. Skinner, Sigmund Freud, and Jean Piaget.^[2] In April 2025, Badura became the first psychologist with more than a million Google Scholar citations. During his lifetime, Bandura was widely described as the greatest living psychologist,^[3][4][5][6] and as one of the most influential psychologists of all time.^[7][8]