Philip Zimbardo: biography of this social psychologist

Philip Zimbardo (1933-) is one of the most popular social psychologists today. He is recognized for his theories related to the situational attribution of behavior, prosocial behaviors, the relationship between obedience and authority, among others. He is especially recognized for the classic and controversial Stanford Prison experiment, carried out in the 1970s in the vicinity of Stanford University.

Next we will see a biography of Philip Zimbardo, as well as a brief description of the experiment that led him to be internationally recognized as one of the most representative social psychologists of the 20th century.

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Philip Zimbardo: biography of this social psychologist

Philip Zimbardo was born on March 23, 1933 in New York City, into a Sicilian family based in the Bronx neighborhood. In the year 1954, Zimbardo he specialized with a triple degree of psychologist, sociologist and anthropologist from Brooklyn College.

Subsequently, he pursued graduate studies in social psychology, eventually earning his Ph.D. in the same area from Yale University. In the latter he taught classes, and did the same at the University of New York and Columbia University. He was also president of the American Psychological Association (APA) in 2002, and has been awarded numerous awards that recognize his research as some of the most important contributions to the psychology.

He is currently a professor emeritus at Stanford University., where he taught for 50 years, and also teaches at the University of Palo Alto in California.

The Stanford Prison Experiment

In the year 1971, Philip Zimbardo, along with other researchers, conducted an experiment that led him to be recognized as one of the most representative social psychologists of the time.

This is the Stanford prison experiment, which had the objective of studying the influence of the social environment on the character and actions of a person. Through this experiment I wanted to demonstrate how social situations have the power to significantly influence individual behavior.

In very broad terms, the experiment consisted of simulating a prison at the Stanford University facilities, establishing different roles for each of the 24 men who participated.

They were randomly divided into two groups: some were guards, while others were prisoners. All of them were university students and had been previously evaluated to determine a good state of physical and psychological health.

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Results and implications

In exchange for their participation, they were offered economic remuneration and, at the beginning, they were asked to wear specific uniforms according to the role they play. The prisoners were taken to the prison also simulating an arrest. While there they were assigned a number and a space. For his part, the guards were prohibited from exercising physical violence, while they were asked to run the prison as they saw fit.

Although the experiment was designed to last several weeks, it had to be stopped before that the first one finished, because each of the participants had assumed their role in such a way that serious dynamics of violence were being generated.

With this experiment it was concluded, among many other things, that it is the situation that generates both violent behavior and submission to authority. In addition, due to the results that emerged once it was finished, Zimbardo was called to testify as an expert witness in the trials on the abuses that occurred in the Iraqi prison of Abu Ghraib.

some criticism

Due to the conditions in which this experiment was designed and carried out, both Zimbardo and his collaborators have received numerous criticisms. The most widespread is the ethical questioning of the tendency of a good part of scientific research to generate serious situations of stress in the participants, in order to verify a hypothesis.

On the other hand, the possibility of generalizing their findings has been questioned, due to the homogeneity of the sample they used. In the same sense, the presence of gender bias has been questioned (for example, only men participated, including the researchers), in addition to considering theories about prosocial behaviors that tend to be measured based on behavioral models masculine.

Later Works: Psychology of Heroism

Currently Philip Zimbardo he continues to develop studies on prosocial behaviors, more specifically in critical circumstances, and in relation to what he has called "heroism". He is founder and president of the Heroic Imagination Project, where he he has worked in an important way on the "Psychology of heroism" and the training of "behaviors heroic”.

Outstanding works

Notable works by Philip Zimbardo include The Lucifer Effect: Understanding how good people turn bad, where analyzes the parallels between the Stanford prison experiment and the mistreatment of the Iraqi prison of Abu Ghraib. Other of his important works are psychology and life, and the paradox of time.

Bibliographic references:

• American Psychological Association (2018). Philip G. Zimbardo. Retrieved August 30, 2018. Available in http://www.apa.org/about/governance/president/bio-philip-zimbardo.aspx.
• Garcia Dauder, S. and Pérez Sedeño, E. (2018). Scientific 'lies' about women. Waterfall: Madrid.
• Stanford Prison Experiment (2018). The Stanford Prison Experiment: a simulation study on the psychology of the imprisonment. Retrieved August 30, 2018. Available in http://www.prisonexp.org.
• Heroic Imagination Project (2017). Our Mission. Retrieved August 30, 2018. Available in https://www.heroicimagination.org.
• Redes-The slippery slope of evil (2010). Networks for science. Retrieved August 30, 2018. Available in http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/videos/redes/redes-pendiente-resbaladiza-maldad/736047/.
• Biographical Sketch (2000) Philip G. Zimbardo. Retrieved August 30, 2018. Available in http://www.zimbardo.com/votezim/bio.html.
• Eagle, A. and Crowley, M. (1986). Gender and helping behavior: a meta-analysis review of the social psychological literature. Psychological Bulletin, 100(3): 283-308.