Albert Bandura

Born December 4, 1925, Bandura moved from Canada to Stanford, where he spent decades building social cognitive theory and the concept of self-efficacy — the belief that you can act and change outcomes. In 1961, his Bobo doll experiment showed that children who watched an adult hit an inflatable clown were far more likely to do the same, proving that behavior could be learned through observation alone, without reinforcement. The work bridged behaviorism and cognitive psychology at a time when the field was ready to cross. A 2002 survey placed him fourth among the most-cited psychologists ever,…