Philip Zimbardo
Encyclopedia
Philip George Zimbardo is an American
psychologist
and a professor emeritus at Stanford University
. He is president of the Heroic Imagination Project. He is known for his Stanford prison study and authorship of various introductory psychology books and textbook
s for college students, including The Lucifer Effect and The Time Paradox.
on March 23, 1933, from a family of Sicilian immigrants. He completed his BA with a triple major in psychology
, sociology
, and anthropology
from Brooklyn College
in 1954, where he graduated summa cum laude. He completed his M.S. (1955) and Ph.D (1959) in psychology from Yale University
, where Neal E. Miller was his advisor. He taught at Yale from 1959 to 1960. From 1960 to 1967, he was a professor of psychology at New York University
. From 1967 to 1968, he taught at Columbia University
. He joined the faculty at Stanford University
in 1968.
, he conducted the Stanford prison study in which 24 normal college students were randomly assigned to be "prisoners" or "guards" in a mock prison located in the basement of the psychology building at Stanford (three additional college students were selected as alternates, but did not participate in the study). The two week planned study into the psychology of prison life ended only after 6 days due to emotional trauma being experienced by the participants. The students quickly began acting out their roles, with "guards" becoming sadistic and "prisoners" showing extreme passivity and depression
.
The volunteers knew they were being used in a study but they did not know when the study would be taking place, so the initial shock of being randomly arrested one morning and taken to the mock prison put them in a mild state of shock. On arrival, the “prisoners” were stripped, searched, shaved and deloused, which caused a great deal of humiliation. They were then issued uniforms, ID numbers, and escorted to their cells by the volunteer prison guards. These changes isolated the prisoners making it harder for them to portray their individual characteristics. The guards themselves were not given any specific instruction or guidelines for the way they were to treat the prisoners. Instead, the psychologists allowed them to do whatever was needed to keep order in the prison. They were dressed very professionally in identical uniforms. They also wore a whistle around their neck and carried a night stick.
At the beginning of the experiment, Zimbardo started off with nine guards and nine prisoners. All the original volunteers were kept as backups and 3 prisoners as well as 3 guards occupied the prison at a time. Their first night in the prison, the volunteer prisoners were awakened at 2:30 AM by the guards blowing their whistles. They did this several times to familiarize the prisoners with how things were going to work and to let them know who was in charge.
The study shows that before the volunteer prisoners started showing signs of distress, they did not take the guards and their authority seriously. The prisoners mocked the guards, trying to regain their individuality. This, however, was short-lived. The prisoners soon realized that the attitude of the guards was very serious and that they demanded obedience. This began a long string of confrontational quarrels between the guards and prisoners. The guards used physical punishment and exercises, such as pushups, in order to show their authority to the prisoners.
In the morning of only the second day, a rebellion broke out among the volunteer prisoners. They ripped off their uniforms and locked themselves in their cells by pushing their beds up against the door. In response to this, the guards became very angry and called for backup assistance to the situation. This surprised Zimbardo as well as the rest of the psychologists because they had not thought it would be taken this far. Guards who were not on duty were called in and the guards who were assigned to only the night shift stayed with the guards who came in all the way through their shift the next morning. The tactic the guards came up with was to fight back in order to discipline the unruly prisoners and make them obey. In response to the prisoners barricading themselves in their cells, the guards used fire extinguishers on them to get them away from the entrances.
Once the guards were able to get into the cells, they stripped the inmates naked, tore apart the beds and the cell, and put the prisoners who had started the rebellion in solitary confinement. As all nine guards could not be on duty at once, they began rewarding the prisoners for good behavior. The prisoners who had not been involved in starting the riot were allowed to lie in their beds, wash themselves and brush their teeth and eat while those who had started the riot were not allowed to. The guards continued to use tormenting tactics to break up the prisoners relations with each other to avoid further organized resistance. In the case with one prisoner, who was a smoker, the guards were able to control his behavior because they decided when and if he was allowed to smoke.
Less than two full days into the experiment, one inmate began suffering from depression, uncontrolled rage, crying and other mental dysfunctions. The prisoner was eventually released after screaming and acting unstable in front of the other inmates.
On the third day, the study allowed visiting hours for friends and family. The visitation was closely monitored and timed with many rules and restrictions.
The next event that added to the prison experiment “drama” was a rumored escape plan that the prisoners were planning on carrying out directly after visiting hours. The prisoner was going to have some of his friends round up, break into the prison and free all of the prisoners. After one of the guards overheard this plan, an informant was placed in among the prisoners and the escape never happened. The prisoners who had been thought to have organized the escape were disciplined and harassed with more pushups and toilet cleaning.
At some point, even the prisoners who were thought of as role models, those who obeyed all of the guards' commands were being punished. Going to the bathroom was considered a privilege rather than a necessity, and those who acted out against the guards were made to urinate and defecate in a bucket in their cell.
By the end of the experiment, there was no unification among prisoners as well as guards. The guards also had won complete control over all of their prisoners and were using their authority to its greatest extent. One prisoner had even gone as far as to go on a hunger strike. Refusing to eat, the guards put him into solitary confinement for three hours (even though their own rules stated the limit that a prisoner could be in solitary confinement was only one hour). Instead of the other prisoners looking at this inmate as a hero and following along in his strike, they chanted together that he was a bad prisoner and a troublemaker. The prisoners literally had begun to think they were real criminals. Prisoners and guards rapidly adapted to their roles, stepping beyond the boundaries of what had been predicted and leading to dangerous and psychologically damaging situations.
One-third of the guards were judged to have exhibited "genuine" sadistic tendencies, while many prisoners were emotionally traumatized and five had to be removed from the study early.
Zimbardo himself started to give into the roles of the situation. He had to be shown the reality of the experiment by Christina Maslach, his girlfriend and future wife, who had just received her doctorate in psychology.
At the end of the experiment, after all the prisoners had been released and the guards let go, everyone was brought back into the same room for evaluation and to be able to get their feelings out in the open towards one another. Ethical concerns surrounding the famous study often draw comparisons to the Milgram experiment
, which was conducted in 1961 at Yale University by Stanley Milgram, Zimbardo's former high school friend.
A 2006 study was conducted by the British Broadcasting Company
replicating the study by Zimbardo. This study, due to the fact that was conducted in later times, had more restrictions. While there were restrictions, there were also great differences. The first of the differences was how the participants were filtered. The Stanford Prison Experiment only gave the participants interviews and then certain personality tests. The BBC study used first psychometric tests, which combined a series of personality, attitude and mood tests. These tests were self-report tests. The second measure to filter the participants was a telephone interview. If they had passed through the first two filters the final was a full clinical interview. The second difference was how the participants were labeled either to be guards or prisoners. The Stanford Prison Experiment used random assignment to arrange them into the two groups. The BBC study first divided the participants into groups of smaller numbers in which they were organized by key psychological dimensions. From here they were then separated into prisoners and guards. Another difference was how the prisoners were brought to the mock prisons. The Stanford Prison Experiment participants were actually arrested for crimes which they did not commit, while those in the BBC study were just brought to the location by a blacked out car.
When it comes to the difference in the results between the Stanford Prison Experiment and the BBC prison study, it is clear that the BBC study is more of a struggle to figure out what to do when there is no direction given. There was more of a conflict within the two groups than between the two groups themselves. The Stanford Prison Experiment was looking at what happened when you gave one group authority over another and the power the situation. Philip Zimbardo himself even made a critique on the BBC study describing the differences in the setup, execution and results of the study. The setup differences range from the actual participants age and how the Stanford Prison Experiment actually used college students, while the BBC prison study used men of different ages. The two studies differed with how they were executed and how rules were set up and a hierarchy was put in place. Neither of these happened in the BBC prison study. In the conclusion, Zimbardo states that the conclusion was only one that was put in place for media, not for science.
After the prison experiment, Zimbardo decided to look for ways he could use psychology to help people; this led to the founding of The Shyness Clinic
in Menlo Park, California
, which treats shy behavior
in adults and children. Zimbardo's research on shyness resulted in several bestselling books on the topic. Other subjects he has researched include mind control
and cult
ic behavior.
Zimbardo is the co-author of an introductory Psychology textbook entitled Psychology and Life, which is used in many American undergraduate psychology courses. He also hosted a PBS TV series titled Discovering Psychology
which is used in many college telecourses
.
In 2002, Zimbardo was elected president of the American Psychological Association
. Under his direction, the organization developed the website PsychologyMatters.org, a compendium of psychological research that has applications for everyday life. Also that year, he appeared in the British reality television
show, The Human Zoo. Participants were observed inside a controlled setting while Zimbardo and a British psychologist analyzed their behavior.
In 2004, Zimbardo testified for the defense in the court martial of Sgt. Ivan "Chip" Frederick
, a guard at Abu Ghraib prison
. He argued that Frederick's sentence should be lessened due to mitigating circumstances, explaining that few individuals can resist the powerful situational pressures of a prison, particularly without proper training and supervision. The judge apparently disregarded Zimbardo's testimony, and gave Frederick the maximum 8-year sentence. Zimbardo drew on the knowledge he gained from his participation in the Frederick case to write a new book entitled, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, about the connections between Abu Ghraib and the prison experiments.
In September 2006, Zimbardo joined the faculty at Pacific Graduate School of Psychology
as Professor of Psychology, where he teaches social psychology
to doctoral students in the clinical psychology
program.
Zimbardo's writing appeared in Greater Good Magazine, published by the Greater Good Science Center
of the University of California, Berkeley
. Zimbardo's contributions include the interpretation of scientific research into the roots of compassion, altruism, and peaceful human relationships. His most recent article with Greater Good magazine is entitled: "The Banality of Heroism", which examines how ordinary people can become everyday heroes. In February 2010, Zimbardo was a guest presenter at the Science of a Meaningful Life seminar: Goodness, Evil, and Everyday Heroism, along with Greater Good Science Center
Executive Director Dacher Keltner
.
Zimbardo, who officially retired in 2003, gave his final "Exploring Human Nature" lecture on March 7, 2007, on the Stanford campus, bringing his teaching career of 50 years to a close. David Spiegel, professor of psychiatry
at the Stanford University School of Medicine
, called Zimbardo "a legendary teacher", saying that "he has changed the way we think about social influences."
Though retired Zimbardo still conducts research at Stanford University and teaches one class at the former Pacific Graduate School of Psychology, now Palo Alto University.
Zimbardo has made appearances on American TV, such as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on March 29, 2007, The Colbert Report on February 11, 2008 and Dr. Phil on October 25, 2010.
Zimbardo is currently heading a movement for everyday heroism as the founder and director of The Heroic Imagination Project (HIP), a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting heroism in everyday life. The project is currently collecting data from former American gang members and former smelly individuals with ties to terrorism for comparison, in an attempts better understand how individuals change violent behavior. This research portion of the project is co-headed by Dr. Rony Berger, Dr. Yotam Heineburg, and Dr. Leonard Beckum.
Foundation Vision 97 Award in Prague
.
In 2003, Zimbardo, Gian Vittorio Caprara and Claudio Barbaranelli an academic of the University of Rome La Sapienza
were awarded the sarcastic Ig Nobel Award for Psychology for their report "Politicians' Uniquely Simple Personalities."
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
psychologist
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
and a professor emeritus at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
. He is president of the Heroic Imagination Project. He is known for his Stanford prison study and authorship of various introductory psychology books and textbook
Textbook
A textbook or coursebook is a manual of instruction in any branch of study. Textbooks are produced according to the demands of educational institutions...
s for college students, including The Lucifer Effect and The Time Paradox.
Early years
Zimbardo was born in New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
on March 23, 1933, from a family of Sicilian immigrants. He completed his BA with a triple major in psychology
Psychology
Psychology is the study of the mind and behavior. Its immediate goal is to understand individuals and groups by both establishing general principles and researching specific cases. For many, the ultimate goal of psychology is to benefit society...
, sociology
Sociology
Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...
, and anthropology
Anthropology
Anthropology is the study of humanity. It has origins in the humanities, the natural sciences, and the social sciences. The term "anthropology" is from the Greek anthrōpos , "man", understood to mean mankind or humanity, and -logia , "discourse" or "study", and was first used in 1501 by German...
from Brooklyn College
Brooklyn College
Brooklyn College is a senior college of the City University of New York, located in Brooklyn, New York, United States.Established in 1930 by the New York City Board of Higher Education, the College had its beginnings as the Downtown Brooklyn branches of Hunter College and the City College of New...
in 1954, where he graduated summa cum laude. He completed his M.S. (1955) and Ph.D (1959) in psychology from Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
, where Neal E. Miller was his advisor. He taught at Yale from 1959 to 1960. From 1960 to 1967, he was a professor of psychology at New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
. From 1967 to 1968, he taught at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
. He joined the faculty at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
in 1968.
Prison study
In 1971, Zimbardo accepted a tenured position as professor of psychology at Stanford University. With a government grant from the U.S. Office of Naval ResearchOffice of Naval Research
The Office of Naval Research , headquartered in Arlington, Virginia , is the office within the United States Department of the Navy that coordinates, executes, and promotes the science and technology programs of the U.S...
, he conducted the Stanford prison study in which 24 normal college students were randomly assigned to be "prisoners" or "guards" in a mock prison located in the basement of the psychology building at Stanford (three additional college students were selected as alternates, but did not participate in the study). The two week planned study into the psychology of prison life ended only after 6 days due to emotional trauma being experienced by the participants. The students quickly began acting out their roles, with "guards" becoming sadistic and "prisoners" showing extreme passivity and depression
Depression (mood)
Depression is a state of low mood and aversion to activity that can affect a person's thoughts, behaviour, feelings and physical well-being. Depressed people may feel sad, anxious, empty, hopeless, helpless, worthless, guilty, irritable, or restless...
.
The volunteers knew they were being used in a study but they did not know when the study would be taking place, so the initial shock of being randomly arrested one morning and taken to the mock prison put them in a mild state of shock. On arrival, the “prisoners” were stripped, searched, shaved and deloused, which caused a great deal of humiliation. They were then issued uniforms, ID numbers, and escorted to their cells by the volunteer prison guards. These changes isolated the prisoners making it harder for them to portray their individual characteristics. The guards themselves were not given any specific instruction or guidelines for the way they were to treat the prisoners. Instead, the psychologists allowed them to do whatever was needed to keep order in the prison. They were dressed very professionally in identical uniforms. They also wore a whistle around their neck and carried a night stick.
At the beginning of the experiment, Zimbardo started off with nine guards and nine prisoners. All the original volunteers were kept as backups and 3 prisoners as well as 3 guards occupied the prison at a time. Their first night in the prison, the volunteer prisoners were awakened at 2:30 AM by the guards blowing their whistles. They did this several times to familiarize the prisoners with how things were going to work and to let them know who was in charge.
The study shows that before the volunteer prisoners started showing signs of distress, they did not take the guards and their authority seriously. The prisoners mocked the guards, trying to regain their individuality. This, however, was short-lived. The prisoners soon realized that the attitude of the guards was very serious and that they demanded obedience. This began a long string of confrontational quarrels between the guards and prisoners. The guards used physical punishment and exercises, such as pushups, in order to show their authority to the prisoners.
In the morning of only the second day, a rebellion broke out among the volunteer prisoners. They ripped off their uniforms and locked themselves in their cells by pushing their beds up against the door. In response to this, the guards became very angry and called for backup assistance to the situation. This surprised Zimbardo as well as the rest of the psychologists because they had not thought it would be taken this far. Guards who were not on duty were called in and the guards who were assigned to only the night shift stayed with the guards who came in all the way through their shift the next morning. The tactic the guards came up with was to fight back in order to discipline the unruly prisoners and make them obey. In response to the prisoners barricading themselves in their cells, the guards used fire extinguishers on them to get them away from the entrances.
Once the guards were able to get into the cells, they stripped the inmates naked, tore apart the beds and the cell, and put the prisoners who had started the rebellion in solitary confinement. As all nine guards could not be on duty at once, they began rewarding the prisoners for good behavior. The prisoners who had not been involved in starting the riot were allowed to lie in their beds, wash themselves and brush their teeth and eat while those who had started the riot were not allowed to. The guards continued to use tormenting tactics to break up the prisoners relations with each other to avoid further organized resistance. In the case with one prisoner, who was a smoker, the guards were able to control his behavior because they decided when and if he was allowed to smoke.
Less than two full days into the experiment, one inmate began suffering from depression, uncontrolled rage, crying and other mental dysfunctions. The prisoner was eventually released after screaming and acting unstable in front of the other inmates.
On the third day, the study allowed visiting hours for friends and family. The visitation was closely monitored and timed with many rules and restrictions.
The next event that added to the prison experiment “drama” was a rumored escape plan that the prisoners were planning on carrying out directly after visiting hours. The prisoner was going to have some of his friends round up, break into the prison and free all of the prisoners. After one of the guards overheard this plan, an informant was placed in among the prisoners and the escape never happened. The prisoners who had been thought to have organized the escape were disciplined and harassed with more pushups and toilet cleaning.
At some point, even the prisoners who were thought of as role models, those who obeyed all of the guards' commands were being punished. Going to the bathroom was considered a privilege rather than a necessity, and those who acted out against the guards were made to urinate and defecate in a bucket in their cell.
By the end of the experiment, there was no unification among prisoners as well as guards. The guards also had won complete control over all of their prisoners and were using their authority to its greatest extent. One prisoner had even gone as far as to go on a hunger strike. Refusing to eat, the guards put him into solitary confinement for three hours (even though their own rules stated the limit that a prisoner could be in solitary confinement was only one hour). Instead of the other prisoners looking at this inmate as a hero and following along in his strike, they chanted together that he was a bad prisoner and a troublemaker. The prisoners literally had begun to think they were real criminals. Prisoners and guards rapidly adapted to their roles, stepping beyond the boundaries of what had been predicted and leading to dangerous and psychologically damaging situations.
One-third of the guards were judged to have exhibited "genuine" sadistic tendencies, while many prisoners were emotionally traumatized and five had to be removed from the study early.
Zimbardo himself started to give into the roles of the situation. He had to be shown the reality of the experiment by Christina Maslach, his girlfriend and future wife, who had just received her doctorate in psychology.
At the end of the experiment, after all the prisoners had been released and the guards let go, everyone was brought back into the same room for evaluation and to be able to get their feelings out in the open towards one another. Ethical concerns surrounding the famous study often draw comparisons to the Milgram experiment
Milgram experiment
The Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures was a series of notable social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, which measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that...
, which was conducted in 1961 at Yale University by Stanley Milgram, Zimbardo's former high school friend.
Similar studies
There were ethical issues in researching the original study. A subsequent study looked at the power of roles in selected situations.A 2006 study was conducted by the British Broadcasting Company
British Broadcasting Company
The British Broadcasting Company Ltd was a British commercial company formed on 18 October 1922 by British and American electrical companies doing business in the United Kingdom and licensed by the British General Post Office...
replicating the study by Zimbardo. This study, due to the fact that was conducted in later times, had more restrictions. While there were restrictions, there were also great differences. The first of the differences was how the participants were filtered. The Stanford Prison Experiment only gave the participants interviews and then certain personality tests. The BBC study used first psychometric tests, which combined a series of personality, attitude and mood tests. These tests were self-report tests. The second measure to filter the participants was a telephone interview. If they had passed through the first two filters the final was a full clinical interview. The second difference was how the participants were labeled either to be guards or prisoners. The Stanford Prison Experiment used random assignment to arrange them into the two groups. The BBC study first divided the participants into groups of smaller numbers in which they were organized by key psychological dimensions. From here they were then separated into prisoners and guards. Another difference was how the prisoners were brought to the mock prisons. The Stanford Prison Experiment participants were actually arrested for crimes which they did not commit, while those in the BBC study were just brought to the location by a blacked out car.
When it comes to the difference in the results between the Stanford Prison Experiment and the BBC prison study, it is clear that the BBC study is more of a struggle to figure out what to do when there is no direction given. There was more of a conflict within the two groups than between the two groups themselves. The Stanford Prison Experiment was looking at what happened when you gave one group authority over another and the power the situation. Philip Zimbardo himself even made a critique on the BBC study describing the differences in the setup, execution and results of the study. The setup differences range from the actual participants age and how the Stanford Prison Experiment actually used college students, while the BBC prison study used men of different ages. The two studies differed with how they were executed and how rules were set up and a hierarchy was put in place. Neither of these happened in the BBC prison study. In the conclusion, Zimbardo states that the conclusion was only one that was put in place for media, not for science.
Other endeavors
The Shyness Clinic
The Shyness Clinic is a pioneering clinic founded in the late 1970s by Dr. Philip Zimbardo at Stanford University. Its goal is to research cognitive traits in people with shyness and to offer treatment programs. It was later moved to the community of Palo Alto, California. The clinic follows a...
in Menlo Park, California
Menlo Park, California
Menlo Park, California is a city at the eastern edge of San Mateo County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, in the United States. It is bordered by San Francisco Bay on the north and east; East Palo Alto, Palo Alto, and Stanford to the south; Atherton, North Fair Oaks, and Redwood City...
, which treats shy behavior
Shyness
In humans, shyness is a social psychology term used to describe the feeling of apprehension, lack of comfort, or awkwardness experienced when a person is in proximity to, approaching, or being approached by other people, especially in new situations or with unfamiliar people...
in adults and children. Zimbardo's research on shyness resulted in several bestselling books on the topic. Other subjects he has researched include mind control
Mind control
Mind control refers to a process in which a group or individual "systematically uses unethically manipulative methods to persuade others to conform to the wishes of the manipulator, often to the detriment of the person being manipulated"...
and cult
Cult
The word cult in current popular usage usually refers to a group whose beliefs or practices are considered abnormal or bizarre. The word originally denoted a system of ritual practices...
ic behavior.
Zimbardo is the co-author of an introductory Psychology textbook entitled Psychology and Life, which is used in many American undergraduate psychology courses. He also hosted a PBS TV series titled Discovering Psychology
Discovering Psychology
Discovering Psychology is a PBS documentary on psychology presented by Philip Zimbardo, for which he received the Carl Sagan Award for Public Understanding of Science...
which is used in many college telecourses
Distance education
Distance education or distance learning is a field of education that focuses on teaching methods and technology with the aim of delivering teaching, often on an individual basis, to students who are not physically present in a traditional educational setting such as a classroom...
.
In 2002, Zimbardo was elected president of the American Psychological Association
American Psychological Association
The American Psychological Association is the largest scientific and professional organization of psychologists in the United States. It is the world's largest association of psychologists with around 154,000 members including scientists, educators, clinicians, consultants and students. The APA...
. Under his direction, the organization developed the website PsychologyMatters.org, a compendium of psychological research that has applications for everyday life. Also that year, he appeared in the British reality television
Reality television
Reality television is a genre of television programming that presents purportedly unscripted dramatic or humorous situations, documents actual events, and usually features ordinary people instead of professional actors, sometimes in a contest or other situation where a prize is awarded...
show, The Human Zoo. Participants were observed inside a controlled setting while Zimbardo and a British psychologist analyzed their behavior.
In 2004, Zimbardo testified for the defense in the court martial of Sgt. Ivan "Chip" Frederick
Ivan Frederick
Ivan Frederick II , called Chip Frederick, of Buckingham County, Virginia, is a former Staff Sergeant in the United States Army. He was the highest in rank of the seven U.S. military police personnel who have been charged with torturing prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, all of whom were...
, a guard at Abu Ghraib prison
Abu Ghraib prison
The Baghdad Central Prison, formerly known as Abu Ghraib prison is in Abu Ghraib, an Iraqi city 32 km west of Baghdad. It was built by British contractors in the 1950s....
. He argued that Frederick's sentence should be lessened due to mitigating circumstances, explaining that few individuals can resist the powerful situational pressures of a prison, particularly without proper training and supervision. The judge apparently disregarded Zimbardo's testimony, and gave Frederick the maximum 8-year sentence. Zimbardo drew on the knowledge he gained from his participation in the Frederick case to write a new book entitled, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, about the connections between Abu Ghraib and the prison experiments.
In September 2006, Zimbardo joined the faculty at Pacific Graduate School of Psychology
Pacific Graduate School of Psychology
Palo Alto University is a not-for-profit free-standing educational institute in Palo Alto, California...
as Professor of Psychology, where he teaches social psychology
Social psychology
Social psychology is the scientific study of how people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. By this definition, scientific refers to the empirical method of investigation. The terms thoughts, feelings, and behaviors include all...
to doctoral students in the clinical psychology
Clinical psychology
Clinical psychology is an integration of science, theory and clinical knowledge for the purpose of understanding, preventing, and relieving psychologically-based distress or dysfunction and to promote subjective well-being and personal development...
program.
Zimbardo's writing appeared in Greater Good Magazine, published by the Greater Good Science Center
Greater Good Science Center
The Greater Good Science Center, located at the University of California, Berkeley is an interdisciplinary research center devoted to the scientific understanding of happy and compassionate individuals, strong social bonds, and altruistic behavior. By studying individuals and their relationships,...
of the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
. Zimbardo's contributions include the interpretation of scientific research into the roots of compassion, altruism, and peaceful human relationships. His most recent article with Greater Good magazine is entitled: "The Banality of Heroism", which examines how ordinary people can become everyday heroes. In February 2010, Zimbardo was a guest presenter at the Science of a Meaningful Life seminar: Goodness, Evil, and Everyday Heroism, along with Greater Good Science Center
Greater Good Science Center
The Greater Good Science Center, located at the University of California, Berkeley is an interdisciplinary research center devoted to the scientific understanding of happy and compassionate individuals, strong social bonds, and altruistic behavior. By studying individuals and their relationships,...
Executive Director Dacher Keltner
Dacher Keltner
Dacher Keltner is a professor of psychology at University of California, Berkeley as well as the Director for Greater Good Science Center, formerly known as the Center for the Development of Peace and Well-Being. Professor Keltner received his B.A. in Theatre Studies from the University of...
.
Zimbardo, who officially retired in 2003, gave his final "Exploring Human Nature" lecture on March 7, 2007, on the Stanford campus, bringing his teaching career of 50 years to a close. David Spiegel, professor of psychiatry
Psychiatry
Psychiatry is the medical specialty devoted to the study and treatment of mental disorders. These mental disorders include various affective, behavioural, cognitive and perceptual abnormalities...
at the Stanford University School of Medicine
Stanford University School of Medicine
Stanford University School of Medicine is a leading medical school located at Stanford University Medical Center in Stanford, California. Originally based in San Francisco, California as Cooper Medical College, it is the oldest continuously running medical school in the western United States...
, called Zimbardo "a legendary teacher", saying that "he has changed the way we think about social influences."
Though retired Zimbardo still conducts research at Stanford University and teaches one class at the former Pacific Graduate School of Psychology, now Palo Alto University.
Zimbardo has made appearances on American TV, such as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on March 29, 2007, The Colbert Report on February 11, 2008 and Dr. Phil on October 25, 2010.
Zimbardo is currently heading a movement for everyday heroism as the founder and director of The Heroic Imagination Project (HIP), a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting heroism in everyday life. The project is currently collecting data from former American gang members and former smelly individuals with ties to terrorism for comparison, in an attempts better understand how individuals change violent behavior. This research portion of the project is co-headed by Dr. Rony Berger, Dr. Yotam Heineburg, and Dr. Leonard Beckum.
Recognition
In 2005, Zimbardo received the Dagmar and Václav HavelVáclav Havel
Václav Havel is a Czech playwright, essayist, poet, dissident and politician. He was the tenth and last President of Czechoslovakia and the first President of the Czech Republic . He has written over twenty plays and numerous non-fiction works, translated internationally...
Foundation Vision 97 Award in Prague
Prague
Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...
.
In 2003, Zimbardo, Gian Vittorio Caprara and Claudio Barbaranelli an academic of the University of Rome La Sapienza
University of Rome La Sapienza
The Sapienza University of Rome, officially Sapienza – Università di Roma, formerly known as Università degli studi di Roma "La Sapienza", is a coeducational, autonomous state university in Rome, Italy...
were awarded the sarcastic Ig Nobel Award for Psychology for their report "Politicians' Uniquely Simple Personalities."
Works
- Influencing attitude and changing behavior: A basic introduction to relevant methodology, theory, and applications (Topics in social psychology), Addison Wesley, 1969
- The Cognitive Control of Motivation. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman, 1969
- Stanford prison experiment: A simulation study of the psychology of imprisonment, Philip G. Zimbardo, Inc., 1972
- The psychology of imprisonment: privation, power and pathology, Stanford University, 1972
- Influencing Attitudes and Changing Behavior. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley Publishing Co., 1969, ISBN 0-07-554809-7
- Canvassing for Peace: A Manual for Volunteers. Ann Arbor, MI: Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, 1970, ISBN
- Influencing Attitudes and Changing Behavior (2nd ed.). Reading, MA: Addison Wesley., 1977, ISBN
- How to Overcome Shyness. Family Circle magazine, May 31, 1977 page 14 (with questionnaire)
- Cults go to high school: A theoretical and empirical analysis of the initial stage in the recruitment process, American Family Foundation, 1985
- Shyness: What It Is, What to Do About It, Addison Wesley, 1990, ISBN 0-201-55018-0
- The Psychology of Attitude Change and Social Influence. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991, ISBN 0-87722-852-3
- Psychology (3rd Edition), Reading, MA: Addison Wesley Publishing Co., 1999, ISBN 0-321-03432-5
- The Shy Child : Overcoming and Preventing Shyness from Infancy to Adulthood, Malor Books, 1999, ISBN 1-883536-21-9
- Violence Workers: Police Torturers and Murderers Reconstruct Brazilian Atrocities. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002, ISBN 0-520-23447-2
- Psychology - Core Concepts, 5/e, Allyn & Bacon Publishing, 2005, ISBN 0-205-47445-4
- Psychology And Life, 17/e, Allyn & Bacon Publishing, 2005, ISBN 0-205-41799-X
- The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, Random HouseRandom HouseRandom House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...
, New York, 2007, ISBN 1-400-06411-2 - The Time Paradox: The New Psychology of Time That Will Change Your Life, Simon & SchusterSimon & SchusterSimon & Schuster, Inc., a division of CBS Corporation, is a publisher founded in New York City in 1924 by Richard L. Simon and M. Lincoln Schuster. It is one of the four largest English-language publishers, alongside Random House, Penguin and HarperCollins...
, New York, 2008, ISBN 1-4165-4198-5 - The Journey from the Bronx to Stanford to Abu Ghraib, pp. 85–104 in "Journeys in Social Psychology: Looking Back to Inspire the Future", edited by Robert Levine, et al., CRC Press, 2008. ISBN 0805861343
- Zimbardo, Philip G. " A Simulation Study of the Psychology of Imprisonment Conducted at Stanford University." The Stanford Prison Experiment. 2009. Web. 1 Dec 2009
- Psychology, AP* Edition, Zimbardo, Phil, Johnson, Robert, Weber, Ann, Gruber, Craig, Allyn & BaconAllyn & BaconAllyn & Bacon, founded in 1868, is a higher education textbook publisher in the areas of education, humanities and social sciences. It is an imprint of Pearson Education and headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts....
, Boston, 2010
See also
- Human experimentation in the United StatesHuman experimentation in the United StatesThere have been numerous experiments performed on human test subjects in the United States that have been considered unethical, and were often performed illegally, without the knowledge, consent, or informed consent of the test subjects....
- List of social psychologists
- Stanford prison experimentStanford prison experimentThe Stanford prison experiment was a study of the psychological effects of becoming a prisoner or prison guard. The experiment was conducted from August 14th-20th, 1971, by a team of researchers led by psychology professor Philip Zimbardo at Stanford University...
- Banality of evilBanality of EvilBanality of evil is a phrase coined by Hannah Arendt and incorporated in the title of her 1963 work Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil. It describes the thesis that the great evils in history generally, and the Holocaust in particular, were not executed by fanatics or...
- Milgram experimentMilgram experimentThe Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures was a series of notable social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram, which measured the willingness of study participants to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts that...
- Seductive PoisonSeductive PoisonSeductive Poison: A Jonestown Survivor's Story of Life and Death in the Peoples Temple is a first-hand account of the incidents surrounding Peoples Temple, written by survivor Deborah Layton...