Philip Zimbardo
Philip Zimbardo
Philip George Zimbardois a psychologist and a professor emeritus at Stanford University. He became known for his 1971 Stanford prison experiment and has since authored various introductory psychology books, textbooks for college students, and other notable works, including The Lucifer Effect, The Time Paradox and The Time Cure. He is also the founder and president of the Heroic Imagination Project...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionScientist
Date of Birth23 March 1933
CountryUnited States of America
time powerful past
Time perspective is one of the most powerful influences on all of human behavior. We're trying to show how people become biased to being exclusively past-, present- or future-oriented.
powerful fear sacrifice
Fear is the State's psychological weapon of choice to frighten citizens into sacrificing their basic freedoms and rule-of-law protections in exchange for the security promised by their all-powerful government.
powerful hero people
... In contrast to the "banality of evil," which posits that ordinary people can be responsible for the most despicable acts of cruelty and degradation of their fellows, I posit the "banality of heroism," which unfurls the banner of the heroic Everyman and Everywoman who heed the call to service to humanity when their time comes to act. When that bell rings, they will know that it rings for them. It sounds a call to uphold what is best in human nature that rises above the powerful pressures of Situation and System as the profound assertion of human dignity opposing evil.
powerful hero variables
Situational variables can exert powerful influences over human behavior, more so that we recognize or acknowledge.
powerful character compassion
The "Lucifer Effect" describes the point in time when an ordinary, normal person first crosses the boundary between good and evil to engage in an evil action. It represents a transformation of human character that is significant in its consequences. Such transformations are more likely to occur in novel settings, in "total situations," where social situational forces are sufficiently powerful to overwhelm, or set aside temporally, personal attributes of morality, compassion, or sense of justice and fair play.
american-psychologist blacks dynamics formal published puerto trying understand
My first formal research, published in 1953, was on trying to understand the dynamics of prejudice, of interaction between blacks and Puerto Ricans.
against aware change external overwhelm seduced
There are times when external circumstances can overwhelm us, and we do things we never thought. If you're not aware that this can happen, you can be seduced by evil. We need inoculations against our own potential for evil. We have to acknowledge it. Then we can change it.
antisocial kinds opens seen
When someone is anonymous, it opens the door to all kinds of antisocial behavior, as seen by the Ku Klux Klan.
across change hero heroes heroism line means people saying step willing
I'm saying to be a hero is means you step across the line and are willing to make a sacrifice, so heroes always are making a sacrifice. Heroes always take a risk. Heroes always deviant. Heroes always doing something that most people don't and we want to change - I want to democratise heroism to say any of us can be a hero.
environment external history human influenced inner moral outside religious
That human behavior is more influenced by things outside of us than inside. The 'situation' is the external environment. The inner environment is genes, moral history, religious training.
nixon saw somebody
Most of the evil of the world comes about not out of evil motives, but somebody saying 'get with the program, be a team player;' this is what we saw at Enron, this is what we saw in the Nixon administration with their scandal.
creates cult freedoms good leadership limits members needs nourishes provisions rather
A good cult delivers on its promises. A good cult nourishes the needs of its members, has transparency and integrity, and creates provisions for challenging its leadership openly. A good cult expands the freedoms and well-being of its members rather than limits them.
eye men world
Before I knew that a man could kill a man, because it happens all the time. Now I know that even the person with whom you've shared food, or whom you've slept, even he can kill you with no trouble. The closest neighbor can kill you with his teeth: that is what I have Learned since the genocide, and my eyes no longer gaze the same on the face of the world.
attitude past events
While no one can change events that occurred in the past, everyone can change attitudes and beliefs about them.