Philip Zimbardo

Psychologist

1933-03-23

Quotes by Philip Zimbardo

• My early childhood prepared me to be a social psychologist. I grew up in a South Bronx ghetto in a very poor family. From Sicilian origin, I was the first person in my family to complete high school, let alone go to college.

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• What troubles me is the Internet and the electronic technology revolution. Shyness is fueled in part by so many people spending huge amounts of time alone, isolated on e-mail, in chat rooms, which reduces their face-to-face contact with other people.

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• The Stanford prison experiment came out of class exercises in which I encouraged students to understand the dynamics of prison life.

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• I started studying shyness in adults in 1972. Shyness operates at so many different levels. Out of that research came the Stanford shyness clinic in 1977.

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• What happens when good people are put into an evil place? Do they triumph or does the situation dominate their past history and morality?

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• I have been primarily interested in how and why ordinary people do unusual things, things that seem alien to their natures. Why do good people sometimes act evil? Why do smart people sometimes do dumb or irrational things?

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• Situational variables can exert powerful influences over human behavior, more so that we recognize or acknowledge.

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• 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.

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• Evil is knowing better, but willingly doing worse.

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