Panteleimon (
Jul 29, 2021 19 tweets 9 min read Read on X
There is no official announcement from Stanford yet but there is enough chatter to suggest that the legendary Albert Bandura has passed away. We know this day was coming (Bandura was born in December, 1925) but it is still a very sad day in the history of psychology. A tribute...
I think it's fair to say that few people have been able to read (and understand) Bandura from the original. Most know Social Learning Theory and Social Cognitive Theory from simplified and abbreviated secondary sources. His language seems wordy but is densely packed with meaning.
I first tried to read his 1977 classic as an undergrad in the late 1980s. I probably made it to page 2 before giving up, exhausted. It would be years before I managed to return to it, with more experience, and was able to finish it.
It is very unfortunate that, in our effort to make Social Cognitive Theory more palatable to students, we focus heavily on self-efficacy and its sources, in essence misrepresenting a vastly broader and more complex theoretical framework.
Bandura was clearly one of the deepest theoretical thinkers of twentieth-century psychology, and a worthy recipient of the National Medal of Science.

nationalmedals.org/laureate/alber…
The citation reads: "For fundamental advances in the understanding of social learning mechanisms and self-referent thinking processes in motivation and behavior change, and for the development of the social cognitive theory of human action and psychological development."
The history of psychology will recognize Bandura as the key facilitator of the transition from behaviorism to cognitivism. The Bobo Doll experiment was brilliant in serving as a bridge, demonstrating the passive imitation alongside the (cognitively driven) creative embellishment.
It can be said that Bandura accelerated by behaviorism-cognitivism transition by lucidly and directly recognizing the value of both perspectives. Yes, the social stimulus is important. But so is the cognitive processing.
Only then did he hit you with the asterisk: In the system of triadic reciprocal determinism, please don't confuse "reciprocity" as implying "equal strength." And that was the door to a cognitivism that, in the view of many (including myself) was rather extreme.
According to Bandura, stimuli gain meaning for the individuals only through the prism of cognitive appraisal. While this is easy to accept for social or cultural constructs, things get more complicated when the idea is applied to, say, physiological or biological constraints.
Like other cognitivists of the 1960s (e.g., Richard Lazarus, Magda Arnold), Bandura echoes Cannon's critique of James, arguing that the body only generates malleable "arousal" ("body stuff"), too diffuse and undifferentiated to correspond to the richness of conscious experience.
The idea of malleable "body stuff" that cognitive appraisal can transform to diverse states of consciousness, from tiredness to elation, was readily accepted in the exuberance of nascent cognitivism. It was formalized by Schachter and Singer (1962) and extended by Zilmann (1972).
Notice the how the idea of malleable "body stuff" survived intact throughout the 20th century, from Cannon to Schachter to Lazarus to Bandura, despite the monumental changes that took place in psychology during this time. Intact!
Social Cognitive Theory was a dominant theoretical perspective when Exercise Psychology started developing. So, perhaps understandably or perhaps ironically, the belief in malleable "body stuff" transferred to Exercise Psychology, making it more "psychology" and less "exercise."
So, this refusal to appreciate the role of the body in shaping consciousness, will likely be seen as one of the areas where Bandura fell short. As critic Christina Lee aptly put it, in Bandura, the body is reduced to something "more or less tacked on as a way of getting around."
Another area where Exercise Psychology should look critically at Bandura's legacy is the endorsement of the assumption of rationality and the fixation on the mind-as-computer analogy. Like other cognitivists of his era, the key to behavior change for Bandura was ...information.
If interested in learning more about Bandura's legacy for Exercise Psychology, see (1) faculty.sites.iastate.edu/ekkekaki/files… and (2) faculty.sites.iastate.edu/ekkekaki/files…

We certainly owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to this giant of psychology for his invaluable theoretical insights. Rest in Peace...
There is now verification that Albert #Bandura has died. Here is the obituary from the @nytimes. The title "Leading Psychologist of Aggression" certainly does not do justice to the amazing scope of his work.

nytimes.com/2021/07/29/sci…

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More from @Ekkekakis

Mar 28
Kahneman and exercise science? What is the relevance of the scientific legacy of the great Israeli psychologist and Nobel laureate to the science of physical activity? It's much more than you think. A thread -- and a tribute...
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Let's start from this. Imagine that you bring together the world's best physical activity epidemiologists, experts in physical activity assessment, exercise physiologists, and sports medicine physicians. You put them in a room at the @WHO headquarters and ask them to develop the next physical activity guidelines. What are they going to come up with?Image
In the absence of input from the behavioral sciences, the team will likely follow what I call the "common sense approach" to developing physical activity guidelines. For example, analyze the @WHO guidelines. The part at the top gives the rationale for physical activity. Image
Read 29 tweets
Nov 8, 2023
In November 2020, my students and I discovered a completely fake meta-analysis, now cited more than 100 times. I notified @Hindawi but, as shown below, they have no intention to act. Each year, on the anniversary of the discovery, I re-post this thread... Image
This is the meta-analysis in question, supposedly summarizing RCTs examining the effects of exercise in patients with chronic renal failure. Note that the APC for "BioMed Research International" is $2,550.

doi.org/10.1155/2017/7…
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Also note that @WileyGlobal bought @Hindawi in 2021 for $298 million, evidently unbothered by the fact that @Hindawi is generally not considered a reputable scientific publisher.

newsroom.wiley.com/press-releases…
Image
Read 17 tweets
Oct 8, 2023
Steve Blair, an iconic figure in the field of exercise science over the past four decades, has passed away at the age of 84. He is leaving behind an enormous legacy. I would like to share a few thoughts... Image
In my mind, Blair was the last of the trio of physical activity epidemiologists that gave our field a prominent place in contemporary medicine and public health. We lost Jerry Morris on Oct 28, 2009. We lost Ralph Paffenbarger on Jul 9, 2007. We lost Steve Blair on Oct 6, 2023. Image
Parenthetically, if you are interested, the @ACSMNews has a wonderful 22-minute video at the YouTube link below, featuring a conversation with Blair and Paffenbarger. Highly recommended.


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Read 23 tweets
Dec 14, 2022
This sort of headlines (what you thought you knew is actually false) are becoming increasingly common. While we can debate their scientific value, one thing is for sure: they are *wonderful* training opportunities for Kinesiology / Exercise Science students. Let's take a look... Image
The first thing to note is that these headlines are happening against the backdrop of tremendous activity in the dementia field following the flop of Aducanumab (Aduhelm). Now, there is lecanemab, also a monoclonal antibody, with similar side-effects (brain swelling, bleeding). Image
So, let's look at the study in question. The MEDEX (Mindfulness, Education, and Exercise) randomized controlled trial ($3M) aimed to compare mindfulness-based stress reduction and exercise, alone or in combination, with a control intervention (health ed).

doi.org/10.1001/jama.2… Image
Read 25 tweets
Aug 10, 2022
Today is the first formal step toward the culmination of a 10-year process of trying to analyze and comprehend the phenomenon of HIIT within exercise science. Paper II (from a set of 6) with @NBTiller is the first to become available online (DM for PDF).

doi.org/10.1123/kr.202… Image
In this paper, @NBTiller and I address the increasing prevalence of "spin" by examining 4 extraordinary claims that appeared in the HIIT research literature and subsequently made a splash as media headlines. We dissect the underlying research used as the basis for these claims. Image
What we find is a narrative that has run amok, becoming disconnected from the data; blatant neglect of basic methodological and statistical principles; serious errors of reporting; a striking absence of critical appraisal by journals, university press offices, and the mass media.
Read 5 tweets
Aug 10, 2022
When you read that power calculations determined that a sample size of "8 per group" sufficed to provide 80% power, do you get a queasy feeling in your stomach? Like something ain't right? And does the paper start to smell fishy all of a sudden? Don't you get the urge to verify?
So, your stomach would be correct. Let's set aside for a moment that expecting 50% superiority from an 8-week intervention is kind-of ludicrous. Since 50% of 15 is 7.5, comparing 15±5 to 22.5±5 gives d=0.61, which requires 43 per group (not 8) to reach 80% power.
Then, you read that VO2peak changed from 22.6±8.2 to 24.7±7.9 (+2.1 ml) in one group and from 23.2±5.4 to 26.7±5.8 (+3.5 ml) in the other but "improvements in CRF" were "larger" in the latter group (with N=10 per group). Don't you get a strange feeling that those means are close?
Read 11 tweets

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