2. Developmental Theories and Theorists

The Canadian psychologist Albert Bandura is known for his Social Learning Theory.  Although many have described him as a behaviourist, Bandura described himself as a cognitive behaviourist. We will study him in the developmental psychology section. In his famous Bobo doll experiments, he showed videos of an adult hitting a doll, to children, and then later, observed them copying that aggressive behaviour in the absence of reward or punishment.  He then developed his theory that people's behaviour can be learned from observation and imitation.