CC/NUMBER 34 This Week’s Citation Classic AUGUST 24, 1981 Bandura A & Walters R H. Social learning and personality development. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1963. 329 p. [Stanford Univ., Stanford, CA and Univ. Waterloo, Ontario, Canada]

In this volume the explanatory principles reconceptualization of social development. of social learning are applied to major “Psychological theorizing and research on domains of social development. This how behavior patterns are acquired had conceptual scheme explains human been essentially confined to learning behavior in terms of complex interactions through response consequences. As a result, of social, vicarious, and self-generated the rudimentary form of learning by direct influences. [The Social Sciences Citation experience was exhaustively studied, but the Index® (SSCI®) indicates that this book has more pervasive and powerful mode of been cited over 985 times since 1966.] learning through modeling was largely ignored. Learning would be exceedingly laborious, not to mention perilous, if people Albert Bandura had to rely solely on the effects of their Department of Psychology actions to inform them what to do. We Stanford University rectified this prolonged neglect by giving Stanford, CA 94305 observational learning the prominence it fully deserved. July 6, 1981 “The same limited perspective was also reflected in behavioral theories about what regulates human behavior. Much of the empirical research was concerned with how “It is sometimes said that writing a book actions are shaped and controlled by their takes possession of the author. Walters and I external consequences. But external found ourselves so completely possessed by outcomes, influential as they often are, are this one that it would have astounded even not the sole determinants of human action. the most devout exorcist. During a summer of “Theories that depicted behavior as the self-imposed confinement we labored from product of external rewards and punishments dawn into the late hours of the night for days presented a truncated image of human on end without a break. Three weary months functioning because people partly regulate later we emerged into the real world from their actions through self-evaluative this marathon writing session with the consequences. Therefore, the development completed manuscript in hand. Even the of self-reactive functions, which gives mere thought of proofreading and revising humans the capacity for self-direction, also what we had written under this taxing figured prominently in our book. The various schedule was enough to send us to the aspects of personality development— Excedrin cabinet. dependency, independence, aggression, “At the time this book was written, theories sex, achievement, anxiety, empathy, about social development were undergoing morality, and psychopathy, to mention just a major change. The conceptual system that few —were explained in terms of complex had been in vogue for years was an interactions of external, vicarious, and self amalgam of tenets of psychoanalytic and influences. Hullian learning theory. Human behavior “I suppose one reason this book has been was viewed from this perspective as mainly widely cited over the years is that it offered the product of internal drives, often principles of broad explanatory power that operating below the level of consciousness. are readily applicable to diverse The research that we and others were psychological phenomena. A subsequent conducting at the time underscored the book provides a more detailed discussion of paramount role played by social, vicarious, the major determinants and mechanisms of and self-regulatory influences in human social learning and its pervasive impact on behavior. This work formed a solid basis for a human functioning.”1

1. Bandura A. Social learning theory. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1977. 247 p. 145