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Philip Zimbardo Quotes

1933–2024 United States

Philip George Zimbardo (March 23, 1933 – October 14, 2024) was a psychologist and a professor emeritus at Stanford University. He was president of the Heroic Imagination Project, famous for his Stanford prison study involving Groupthink processes and for authorship of various introductory psychology books and textbooks for college students, including The Lucifer Effect and The Time Paradox.

United States
Academics
Psychologists
Sociologists

Also known as: Zimbardo

Random Philip Zimbardo quote

5 quotes

I summarize more than 30 years of research on factors that can create a "perfect storm" which leads good people to engage in evil actions.

In his introduction to his site on The Lucifer Effect (2007)

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.

Whether we consider Nazi Germany or Abu Ghraib prison, there were many people who observed what was happening and said nothing.

Research has shown that the bystander effect is often motivated by diffusion of responsibility, when different people witnessing an emergency all assume someone else will help.

We're going to take away their individuality in various ways. In general what all this leads to is a sense of powerlessness. That is, in this situation we'll have all the power and they'll have none.

Stanford prison experiment (1971)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Philip Zimbardo (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.