Zimbardo Quotes

As a result of the prison study, I really became more aware of the central role of power in our lives. I became more aware of the power I have as a teacher. I started consciously doing things to minimize the negative use of power in the classroom. I encouraged students to challenge me. ~ Philip Zimbardo

Ideas for my first experiments in human aggression came from discussions we had in a research seminar about William Golding's 'Lord of the Flies.' ~ Philip Zimbardo

Jerry-5486: The most apparent thing that I noticed was how most of the people in this study derive their sense of identity and well-being from their immediate surroundings rather than from within themselves, and that's why they broke down - just couldn't stand the pressure - they had nothing within them to hold up against all of this. ~ Philip G. Zimbardo

The very same situation that can inflame the hostile imagination and evil in some of us can inspire the heroic imagination in others. ~ Philip G. Zimbardo

This is the woman who stopped the Stanford Prison Study. When I said it got out of control, I was the prison superintendent. I didn't know it was out of control. I was totally indifferent. She came down, saw that madhouse and said, "You know what, it's terrible what you're doing to those boys. They're not prisoners, they're not guards, they're boys, and you are responsible." And I ended the study the next day. The good news is I married her the next year. ~ Philip Zimbardo

We want to believe in the essential, unchanging goodness of people, in their power to resist external pressures, in their rational appraisal and then rejection of situational temptations. We invest human nature with God-like qualities, with moral and rational faculties that make us both just and wise. We simplify the complexity of human experience by erecting a seemingly impermeable boundary between Good and Evil. ~ Philip G. Zimbardo

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. ~ Philip Zimbardo

Whether we consider Nazi Germany or Abu Ghraib prison, there were many people who observed what was happening and said nothing. At Abu Ghraib, one photo shows two soldiers smiling before a pyramid of naked prisoners while a dozen other soldiers stand around watching passively. If you observe such abuses and don't say, "This is wrong! Stop it!" you give tacit approval to continue. You are part of the silent majority that makes evil deeds more acceptable. ~ Philip Zimbardo

Time is the backdrop of our lives and the very fabric of the cosmos. ~ Philip Zimbardo

he noticed an inscription written on the floor at the foot of a pile of bones: What you are, they once were. What they are, you will be. ~ Zimbardo

The line between good and evil is permeable and almost anyone can be induced to cross it when pressured by situational forces. ~ Philip G. Zimbardo

Companies that model best practices, that model the most upstanding principles, end up as the most profitable. It's not a trade of profits versus principles. ~ Philip Zimbardo

Majority decisions tend to be made without engaging the systematic thought and critical thinking skills of the individuals in the group. Given the force of the group's normative power to shape the opinions of the followers who conform without thinking things through, they are often taken at face value. The persistent minority forces the others to process the relevant information more mindfully. Research shows that the deciscions of a group as a whole are more thoughtful and creative when there is minority dissent than when it is absent. ~ Philip G. Zimbardo

The world is, was, will always be filled with good and evil, because good and evil is the yin and yang of the human condition. ~ Philip Zimbardo

At North Hollywood High School, I was shunned by everyone. I would sit down in the cafeteria, and students would get up from the table and walk away. They thought I was from the Mafia. ~ Philip Zimbardo

The History of Social Anxiety

The fact that some people are shyer than others has been observed since ancient times. However, the medical community didn't become interested in this condition until the 1970s, when Philip Zimbardo founded the Stanford Shyness Clinic.
At the time, many professionals believed that shyness was a natural state that children eventually outgrew. Zimbardo showed that shyness actually is a widespread psychological problem that has deep and lasting effects on those who suffer from it.
This new awareness led to a great deal of research into the causes and treatment of social anxiety. Today, the condition is in the spotlight. Ads in magazines and commercials on television tell about social anxiety and advertise medications to treat it. People are becoming more open about discussing when they feel anxious and feel less ashamed about asking for help. The time has never been better for you to try to overcome your social anxiety. ~ Heather Moehn

If you want to change a person, you've got to change the situation. ~ Philip Zimbardo

Heroes are Ordinary People whose social action is Extra-Ordinary/ who ACT when others are passive, who give up EGO-centrism for SOCIO-centrism. ~ Philip Zimbardo

Mankind is immortal
in the comic perspective not by virtue of man's subjugation of nature
but by virtue of man's subjection to it. The "fall" in tragedy ends in
death; the fall in comedy ends in bed, where, by natures's arithmetic,
one and one make a brand new one. ~ Rose A. Zimbardo

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. ~ Philip Zimbardo

Sticks and stones can break your bones, but names can kill you. ~ Philip G. Zimbardo

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. ~ Philip Zimbardo

There was zero time for reflection. We had to feed the prisoners three meals a day, deal with the prisoner breakdowns, deal with their parents, run a parole board. By the third day I was sleeping in my office. I had become the superintendent of the Stanford county jail. That was who I was: I'm not the researcher at all. Even my posture changes
when I walk through the prison yard, I'm walking with my hands behind my back, which I never in my life do, the way generals walk when they're inspecting troops. ~ Philip Zimbardo

While no one can change events that occurred in the past, everyone can change attitudes and beliefs about them. ~ Philip Zimbardo

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. ~ Philip Zimbardo

Where can you find purpose? Like success and happiness, our purpose exists in the present, and we constantly strive toward the future to maintain it. What it is for which we strive is up to each of us. The important thing is that we strive toward something. ~ Philip Zimbardo

After doing psychology for half a century, my passion for all of it is greater than ever. ~ Philip Zimbardo

When a power elite wants to destroy an enemy nation, it turns to propaganda experts to fashion a program of hate. What does it take for the citizens of one society to hate the citizens of another society to the degree that they want to segregate them, torment them, even kill them? It requires a "hostile imagination," a psychological construction embedded deeply in their minds by propaganda that transforms those others into "The Enemy." That image is a soldier's most powerful motive, one that loads his rifle with ammunition of hate and fear. The image of a dreaded enemy threatening one's personal well-being and the society's national security emboldens mothers and fathers to send sons to war and empowers governments to rearrange priorities to turn plowshares into swords of destruction. ~ Philip G. Zimbardo

Human behavior is incredibly pliable, plastic. ~ Philip G. Zimbardo

Boys' brains are being digitally rewired for change, novelty, excitement and constant arousal. That means they're totally out of sync in traditional classes, which are analog, static, interactively passive. ~ Philip Zimbardo

Our sense of identity is in large measure conferred on us by others in the ways they treat or mistreat us, recognize or ignore us, praise us or punish us. Some people make us timid and shy; others elicit our sex appeal and dominance. In some groups we are made leaders, while in others we are reduced to being followers. We come to live up to or down to the expectations others have of us. ~ Philip Zimbardo

We have nothing against playing video games; they have many good features and benefits. Our concern is that when they are played to excess, especially in social isolation, they can hinder a young man's ability and interest in developing his face-to-face social skills. Multiple problems, including obesity, violence, anxiety, lower school performance, social phobia and shyness, greater impulsivity and depression, have all been associated with excessive gaming. The variety and intensity of video game action makes other parts of life, like school, seem comparatively boring, and that creates a problem with their academic performance, which in turn might require medication to deal with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which then leads to other problems down the road in a disastrous negative cycle ... ~ Philip G. Zimbardo

Depending on whom you ask, time is money, time is love, time is work, time is play, time is enjoying friends, time is raising children, and time is much more. Time is what you make of it. ~ Philip Zimbardo

Maybe Zimbardo wasn't wrong, after all, given the proper instructions or rules, we slipped into our own assigned roles in society without even questioning the morality of what we do. ~ Amelia Danver

Time and oppression are the fathers of rebellious invention. ~ Philip G. Zimbardo

We want to believe we are good, we are different, we are better, or we are superior. But this body of social-psychological research
and there are obviously many more experiments in addition to mine and Milgram's
shows that the majority of good, ordinary, normal people can be easily seduced, tempted, or initiated into behaving in ways that they say they never would. In 30 minutes we got them stepping across that line. ~ Philip Zimbardo

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. ~ Philip Zimbardo

Western societies want men to be upstanding, proactive citizens who take responsibility for themselves, who work with others to improve their communities and nation as a whole. The irony is that society is not giving the support, guidance, means, or places for these young men even to be motivated or interested in aspiring to these goals. In fact, society - from politics to the media to the classroom to our very own families - is a major contributor to this demise because it is inhibiting young men's intellectual, creative, and social abilities right from the start. And the irony is only compounded by the fact that men play such a powerful part in society, which means they are effectively denying their younger counterparts the opportunity to thrive. ~ Philip G. Zimbardo

Evil is knowing better, but willingly doing worse. ~ Philip G. Zimbardo

Mama, humanity is my business. ~ Philip Zimbardo

I was discriminated against because I was Jewish, Italian, black and Puerto Rican. But maybe the worst prejudice I experienced was against the poor. I grew up on welfare and often had to move in the middle of the night because we couldn't pay the rent. ~ Philip Zimbardo

Our ability to selectively engage and disengage our moral standards . . . helps explain how people can be barbarically cruel in one moment and compassionate the next. - Albert Bandura20 ~ Philip G. 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. ~ Philip Zimbardo

Most of us perceive Evil as an entity, a quality that is inherent in some people and not in others. Bad seeds ultimately produce bad fruits as their destinies unfold. . . Upholding a Good-Evil dichotomy also takes 'good people' off the responsibility hook. They are freed from even considering their possible role in creating, sustaining, perpetuating, or conceding to the conditions that contribute to delinquency, crime, vandalism, teasing, bullying, rape, torture, terror, and violence. ~ Philip G. Zimbardo

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. ~ Philip G. Zimbardo

We take comfort in the notion of an unbridgeable gulf between good and evil, but maybe we should understand, as Zimbardo's work suggested, that evil is incremental - something we are all capable of, given the right circumstances. ~ Shane Bauer

In one sense, the Stanford prison study is more like a Greek drama than a traditional experiment, in that we have humanity, represented by a bunch of good people, pitted against an evil-producing situation. The question is, does the goodness of the people overwhelm the bad situation, or does the bad situation overwhelm the good people? ~ Philip Zimbardo

No one played devil's advocate, a figure that every group needs to avoid foolish or even disastrous decisions like this. It was reminiscent of President John Kennedy's "disastrous" decision to invade Cuba in the Bay of Pigs fiasco.11 ~ Philip G. Zimbardo

All of us, when it comes to personality, naturally think in terms of absolutes: that a person is a certain way or is not a certain way. But what Zimbardo and Hartshorne and May are suggesting is that this is a mistake, that when we think only in terms of inherent traits and forget the role of situations, we're deceiving ourselves about the real causes of human behavior. ~ Malcolm Gladwell

Every evil starts with 15 volts. ~ Philip G. Zimbardo

Careers in virtually all academic disciplines are fostered by being a superstar who knows more about one subject than anyone else in the world. ~ Philip Zimbardo

Bullies may be the perpetrators of evil, but it is the evil of passivity of all those who know what is happening and never intervene that perpetuates such abuse. ~ Philip Zimbardo

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. ~ Philip Zimbardo

Conditions that make us feel anonymous, when we think that others do not know us or care to, can foster antisocial, self-interested behaviors. My ~ Philip G. Zimbardo

To be a hero you have to learn to be a deviant
because you're always going against the conformity of the group. ~ Philip G. Zimbardo

Many cults start off with high ideals that get corrupted by leaders or their board of advisors who become power-hungry and dominate and control members' lives. No group with high ideals starts off as a 'cult'; they become one when their errant ways are exposed. ~ Philip Zimbardo

The [Stanford Prison Experiment] was readily approved by the Human Subjects Research committee because it seemed like college kids playing cops and robbers, it was an experiment that anyone could quit at any time and minimal safeguards were in place. You must distinguish hind sight from fore sight, knowing what you know now after the study is quite different from what most people imagined might happen before the study began. ~ Philip Zimbardo

While 76 per cent of Americans said they watched, read or heard the news on a daily basis, only 41 per cent said they went beyond the headlines.4 So there's this potential illusion of knowing. It is the danger of having a superficial level of knowledge about anything, but believing you know everything. ~ Philip G. Zimbardo

For years I've been interested in a fundamental question concerning what I call the psychology of evil: Why is it that good people do evil deeds? I've been interested in that question since I was a little kid. Growing up in the ghetto in the South Bronx, I had lots of friends who I thought were good kids, but for one reason or another they ended up in serious trouble. They went to jail, they took drugs, or they did terrible things to other people. My whole upbringing was focused on trying to understand what could have made them go wrong. ~ Philip Zimbardo

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. ~ Philip G. Zimbardo

I've always been curious about the psychology of the person behind the mask ... ~ Philip G. Zimbardo

Our personal identities are socially situated. We are where we live, eat, work, and make love. [ ... ]
Our sense of identity is in large measure conferred on us by others in the ways they treat or mistreat us, recognize or ignore us, praise us or punish us. Some people make us timid and shy; others elicit our sex appeal and dominance. In some groups we are made leaders, while in others we are reduced to being followers. We come to live up to or down to the expectations others have of us. The expectations of others often become self-fulfilling prophecies. Without realizing it, we often behave in ways that confirm the beliefs others have about us. Those subjective beliefs create new realities for us. We often become who other people think we are, in their eyes and in our behavior. ~ Philip G. Zimbardo

If you don't think much of yourself, why should I, since you obviously know yourself better than anyone else? ~ Philip G. Zimbardo

Situational variables can exert powerful influences over human behavior, more so that we recognize or acknowledge. ~ Philip G. Zimbardo

Bullying is an evil because it not only destroys the life of the kid who's bullied, but also makes everyone in the class who knows this is going on feel guilty for not doing anything. ~ Philip Zimbardo

Zimbardo and Boyd Time perspective is the often nonconscious personal attitude that each of us holds toward time and the process whereby the continual flow of existence is bundled into time categories that help to give order, coherence, and meaning to our lives. ~ Philip G. Zimbardo

It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable. - Eric Hoffer, The Passionate State of Mind ~ Philip G. Zimbardo

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? ~ Philip G. Zimbardo

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. ~ Philip Zimbardo

Prejudice and discrimination have always been a big part of my life. When I was 6, I got beat up and called dirty Jew boy because they thought I looked Jewish. ~ Philip Zimbardo

You are not the same person working alone as you are in a group; in a romantic setting versus an educational one; when you are with close friends or in an anonymous crowd; or when you are traveling abroad as when at home base. ~ Philip Zimbardo

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

A life well lived is the best antidote to that fatal truth. Be active, not a passive worrywart. Find magic in the moment, joy in making someone smile. Listen to a lover's sigh; look into the dancing eyes of a child you made feel special. Most of all, marvel at the wonder that eons of evolutionary time and all your unique experiences have joined to comprise the symphony that is YOU. ~ Philip G. Zimbardo

Coming from New York, I know that if you go by a delicatessen, and you put a sweet cucumber in the vinegar barrel, the cucumber might say, "No, I want to retain my sweetness." But it's hopeless. The barrel will turn the sweet cucumber into a pickle. You can't be a sweet cucumber in a vinegar barrel. ~ Philip Zimbardo

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

When I look back on it, I think, "Why didn't you stop the cruelty earlier?" To stand back was contrary to my upbringing and nature. When I stood back as a noninterfering experimental scientist, I was, in a sense, as drawn into the power of the situation as any prisoners and guards. ~ Philip Zimbardo

That seduction or initiation into evil can be understood by recognizing that most actors are not solitary figures improvising on the empty stage of life. Rather, they are often an ensemble of different players, on a stage with various props and changing costumes, scripts, and stage directions from producers and directors. ~ Philip G. Zimbardo

There are no limits to what I would do to make my classes exciting, interesting, unpredictable. ~ Philip Zimbardo

Heroes are those who can somehow resist the power of the situation and act out of noble motives, or behave in ways that do not demean others when they easily can. ~ Philip G. Zimbardo

The most dramatic instances of directed behavior change and "mind control" are not the consequence of exotic forms of influence, such as hypnosis, psychotropic drugs, or "brainwashing," but rather the systematic manipulation of the most mundane aspects of human nature over time in confining settings. ~ Philip G. Zimbardo

Heroism is the antidote to evil. ~ Philip Zimbardo

People are less rational than they are adept at rationalizing--explaining away discrepancies between their private morality and actions contrary to it. ~ Philip G. Zimbardo

So you faked it to give Zimbardo a better study?" I asked. "It was completely deliberate on my part," he replied. "I planned it. I mapped it out. I carried it through. It was all done for a purpose. I thought I was doing something good at the time. ~ Jon Ronson

At that moment, the Stanford Prison Experiment was changed into the Stanford Prison, not by any top-down formal declarations by the staff but by this bottom-up declaration from one of the prisoners themselves. ~ Philip G. Zimbardo

The first time I spoke publicly about the Stanford Prison Experiment, Stanley Milgram told me: Your study is going to take all the ethical heat off of my back. People are now going to say yours is the most unethical study ever, and not mine. ~ Philip Zimbardo