Page 29 - The Power to Change Anything

18 INFLUENCER

STUDY WITH THE BEST SCHOLARS

Hopkins, Silbert, Sabido—in fact, virtually all the influencers
we studied—draw on the same sources: a handful of brilliant
social scientists you’ll meet in this book. For now, let’s meet the
one almost all cited as the scholar of scholars: Albert Bandura.
He’s a genius whom influence masters routinely study. When
we first entered the offices of the practitioners we studied, most
displayed Dr. Bandura’s works on their bookshelves. His name
leaped out at us because our history with him goes back over
30 years.
We first encountered Bandura in the mid-1970s in his
modest office at Stanford University. There we met a mild-
mannered and brilliant man who was already legendary as the
father of social learning theory. When we reconnected with
him three decades later, at an energetic 83, Dr. Bandura was
still up to his neck in influence research that continues to tilt
the world. He can still lay claim to the fact that he’s the most
cited psychologist alive.
Here’s how Bandura’s work fits into the world of influence
and can be of enormous help to all of us. In his early years, Dr.
Bandura generated a remarkable body of knowledge that led
to rapid changes in behaviors that other theorists had dawdled
over for years. Phobics who’d spent years on a couch were freed
in hours. Addicts who had used drugs for decades became clean
in weeks and were well on their way to making the transforma-
tive changes in their lives that would keep them clean.
Individuals struggling with obesity for a lifetime developed new
habits in months.
One of Bandura’s classic studies demonstrated, for exam-
ple, how powerfully our behavior is shaped by observing oth-
ers. This came at a time when most psychologists believed that
behavior was solely influenced by the direct rewards and pun-
ishments people experienced. This was the age of strict behav-
iorism. And yet Bandura’s intense curiosity about how to
change human behavior made him impatient with such sim-