a professor of psychology at the university of illinois chicago and a former student of dr banduras described dr bandura as someone who was absolutely lacking in personality tics and quirks and who drew a strict line between his personal and professional lives if al banduras cat had been run over in the morning and you met with him in the afternoon he would not be talking about how his cat was run over by a car dr cervone saidin his research dr bandura increasingly focused on beliefs and selfreflection and the role they played in human behavior and development how people talk about and to themselves as dr cervone put itdr bandura found that peoples confidence in their ability to perform a task or to control something that was threatening could have a remarkable impact on how they lived their lives providing people with positive models to follow and an environment in which they could succeed could treat a range of disabling problems including phobiasin studies dr bandura and his collaborators were able to eliminate longstanding fears of snakes in a few hours the treatment he wrote instilled a robust sense of coping efficacy transformed attitudes toward the phobic objects from abhorrence to liking wiped out anxiety biological stress reactions and phobic behavior dr bandura studied how peoples beliefs about the self were developed how they functioned and how they affected behavior he used social cognitive theory codified in his 1986 book social foundations of thought and action as a lens through which to examine various topics from the reduction of disease to how individuals and societies fall into morally transgressive behaviorimagecreditcarolyn kasterassociated pressthe author of many books and hundreds of papers dr bandura was appointed to the order of canada in 2015 the next year president barack obama presented him with the national medal of sciencethe bobo doll experiment remained dr banduras bestknown workhis experiments with kids dramatically demonstrated that both the content of what models do and even the style of what they do is very very influential particularly early in life walter mischel a longtime colleague said in 2018 he died later that year learning through observation may seem obvious he added but the brilliance of al was to show what its applications are for changing all types of behaviorif there was a single principle undergirding his work however it was the idea of personal agency that people through their beliefs about themselves and the processes of selfreflection and selfregulation can exert control over their livesif you look at my life path you try to make the most of whatever is there dr bandura said and to do that you have to believe that through your actions you can influence the course of your lifealex traub contributed reporting