Philip Zimbardo

Life and work

The story behind the role.

American social psychologist, author of Stanford Prison Experiment (1933–2024).

Philip George Zimbardo (; March 23, 1933 – October 14, 2024) was an American psychologist and a professor at Stanford University. He was an internationally known educator, researcher, author and media personality in psychology who authored more than 500 articles, chapters, textbooks, and trade books covering a wide range of topics, including time perspective, cognitive dissonance, the psychology of evil, persuasion, cults, deindividuation, shyness, and heroism. Zimbardo garnered great attention for his 1971 Stanford prison experiment, which was later criticized for its use of methods that allowed Zimbardo himself and whatever biases he may have had to influence the results. He authored various widely used, introductory psychology textbooks for college students, and other notable works, including Shyness, The Lucifer Effect, and The Time Paradox. Zimbardo was the founder and president of the Heroic Imagination Project, a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting heroism in everyday life by training people how to resist bullying, bystanding, and negative conformity. He pioneered The Stanford Shyness Clinic in the 1970s and offered the earliest comprehensive treatment program for shyness. He was the recipient of numerous honorary degrees and many awards and honors for service, teaching, research, writing, and educational media, including the Carl Sagan Award for Public Understanding of Science for his Discovering Psychology video series. He served as Western Psychological Association president in 1983 and 2001, and American Psychological Association president in 2002.

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