Philip Zimbardo

Lore & Background

He experienced discrimination and prejudice growing up poor on welfare in the South Bronx, and being Italian. He survived an early childhood illness and a long stay at Willard Parker Hospital, a hospital for children with contagious diseases, where he learned to read. He graduated from James Monroe High School and was the first in his family to pursue a college degree. He taught at Yale, New York University, Columbia University, and joined Stanford University in 1968, teaching there for 50 years.

Reader's Guide

Philip Zimbardo's significance lies in his wide-ranging contributions to psychology, most notably the Stanford prison experiment, which sparked enduring debate about the power of situational forces on individual behavior. The experiment's later criticism for methodological bias highlights ongoing tensions in experimental design. Beyond this, Zimbardo pioneered treatment for shyness through the Stanford Shyness Clinic and founded the Heroic Imagination Project to promote everyday heroism. His work on the psychology of evil, particularly in The Lucifer Effect, applied lessons from the prison study to real-world abuses such as the Abu Ghraib scandal. He also made psychology accessible to the public through his PBS series Discovering Psychology and numerous textbooks. His legacy includes influencing how social psychology is taught and understood, while his career reflects both the reach and the controversies of experimental social psychology.

Did You Know?

• Zimbardo was the first member of his family to pursue a college degree.
• He organized a walk-out at an NYU graduation ceremony to protest an honorary degree for Robert McNamara.
• His wife Christina Maslach played a role in concluding the Stanford Prison Experiment.
• He collaborated with Allen Funt of Candid Camera to produce educational videos for psychology classes.