Philip Zimbardo

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Philip Zimbardo bigraphy, stories - American psychologist

Philip Zimbardo : biography

March 23, 1933 –

Philip George Zimbardo (born March 23, 1933) is a 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, textbooks for college students, and books including The Lucifer Effect, The Time Paradox and the The Time Cure.

Recognition

In 2012, Zimbardo received the American Psychological Association Gold Medal for Lifetime Achievement in the Science of Psychology.

In 2005, he received the Dagmar and Václav Havel 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, The Guardian, April 19, 2005 for their report "Politicians’ Uniquely Simple Personalities.", Nature, February 6, 1997

Social Intensity Syndrome

In 2008, Dr. Zimbardo began working with Sarah Brunskill and Anthony Ferreras on a new theory called the Social Intensity Syndrome (SIS). SIS seeks to provide a better understanding of how the military works as a community and culture. Zimbardo and Brunskill presented the new theory and a preliminary factor analysis of it accompanying survey at the Western Psychological Association in 2013. Data collection is still in progress.

Early years

Zimbardo was born in New York City 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.

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 Research, he conducted the Stanford prison study in which 24 clinically sane individuals were randomly assigned to be "prisoners" or "guards" in a mock dungeon located in the basement of the psychology building at Stanford (three additional college students were selected as alternates, only one of whom participated in the study). The planned two-week study into the psychology of prison life ended after only six 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.