Social Learning Theory and Developmental Psychology: The Legacies of Robert Sears and Albert Bandura

Social learning theory began as an attempt by Robert Sears and others to meld psychoanalytic and stimulus-response learning theory into a comprehensive explanation of human behavior, drawing on the clinical richness of the former and the rigor of the latter. Albert Bandura abandoned the psychoanalytic and drive features of the approach, emphasizing instead cognitive and informationprocessing capacities that mediate social behavior. Both theories were intended as a general framework for the understanding of human behavior, and their developmental aspects remain to be worked out in detail. Nevertheless, Bandura has provided a strong theoretical beginning: The theory appears to be capable of accounting well for existing developmental data as well as guiding new investigation.