It was a thrill to see the great man on April 22nd, and apparently he is the most cited psychologist in the world. He was talking about his crusade (my words, not his) to reduce “urgent social problems by psychosocial means”. Basically, this involves working with a foundation which aims to change behaviours by modelling better alternatives using TV soaps, the programmes being made by local people for their own population. This is the social learning or social cognitive approach in action, and we saw a variety of video clips of programmes made for and in Africa and Asia and South America addressing such issues as condom use to combat HIV, contraception to limit family size, female genital mutilation, and female education. The success rate in changing perceptions, attitudes and behaviours, maybe even beliefs was to me astonishing though very heartening. I feel the quick fix is unlikely to last, that changing long-entrenched beliefs and behaviours is likely to need long-term work, but as a start these TV soaps are a wonderful tool.

Bandura was not an exciting speaker; he read from his notes and read out his PowerPoint slides which many people clearly found rather disconcerting and disappointing. But the content of what he said I found fascinating, and his dry humour came over in the words themselves. I would not have missed this for anything! The website for this work, worth looking at, is http://www.populationmedia.org/2007/03/21/papers-by-albert-bandura/

Evie Bentley