Philip George Zimbardo (1933–2024) was an American psychologist known for his research on social behavior, time perspective, and the psychology of evil. His work shaped modern social psychology, particularly through the Stanford Prison Experiment (1971.)
Born in New York City, he earned a B.A. from Brooklyn College (1954) and a PhD in psychology from Yale University (1959.) He taught at Yale, Columbia, and New York University before joining Stanford University (1968–2003,) where he conducted his infamous prison experiment on power and authority. He founded the Heroic Imagination Project, promoting heroism and resistance to negative social influences. His research on time perspective and human behavior remains influential.
Zimbardo authored over 500 articles, chapters, and books, including Shyness: What It Is, What to Do About It (1977,) The Shy Child (1981,) The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil (2007,) The Time Paradox (2008,) and Man (Dis)connected (2015.) His textbook Psychology and Life became a widely used introduction to psychology.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Philip Zimbardo
The level of shyness has gone up dramatically in the last decade. I think shyness is an index of social pathology rather than a pathology of the individual.
—Philip Zimbardo
Leave a Reply