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Discover›Philosophy & belief
Contents
Philip Zimbardo
Psychologist

Philip Zimbardo

Famoose for

Conducting the controversial Stanford prison experiment

Shyness · The Lucifer Effect

Born
23 March 1933
Birthplace
New York City
Died
14 October 2024

More people

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Philip Zimbardo

Philip Zimbardo was an American psychologist, teacher and author. His 1971 Stanford prison experiment became widely known but drew substantial criticism over its methods, researcher influence and treatment of participants.

Early life

South Bronx childhood

He grew up in a low-income Italian American family in New York. He studied at Brooklyn College and completed a psychology doctorate at Yale in 1959.

Career

  1. 1960s

    University teaching

    Taught at New York University and Columbia before joining Stanford in 1968.

  2. 1971

    Prison experiment

    Led the simulated-prison study, which was ended early and later challenged on ethical and methodological grounds.

  3. 1970s onward

    Shyness and education

    Developed work on shyness and wrote psychology textbooks.

  4. Later career

    Heroic Imagination Project

    Founded an organisation encouraging people to challenge bullying and passive conformity.

Selected work

Shyness

A book addressing the experience and treatment of shyness.

The Lucifer Effect

His account of situational influences on harmful behaviour.

The Time Paradox

A book with John Boyd on how people think about time.

Beyond work

Family

He married psychologist Christina Maslach in 1972. He had a son from an earlier marriage and two daughters with Maslach.

Sources & photo creditBiography and career ↗Biographical references ↗

Original photograph. Cropped and displayed in monochrome.

Photo: Celina Strzelecka. CC BY-SA 4.0 · Original image. Cropped and displayed in monochrome.