Philip Zimbardo, a pioneering Stanford University psychologist who studied the impacts of environmental factors on individual actions and who is best known as one of the architects of the controversial Stanford Prison Experiment in 1971, has died, the university announced. He was 91.
A native of New York City, Zimbardo joined Stanford faculty in 1968 after stints in New York University and Columbia University. Over the following decades, he was at the forefront of research into shyness, alienation, persuasion and ways in which environmental pressures shape human behavior. His most famous study, the Stanford Prison Experiment, transformed the basement of the Department of the Psychology building into a mock prison and recruited about two dozen graduate students to spend two weeks as either prisoners or guards.
The experiment was halted after six days because of emotional abuses that transpired, according to the university. In a paper that he co-wrote with psychologist Craig Haney in 1998, Zimbardo reflected on the dramatic changes that participants went through in university’s “minimalist” prison and their implications for the nation’s incarceration system.
Even though the “guards” in the experiments were not armed, all participated “in one way or another in the pattern of mistreatment that quickly developed,” in some cases escalating their behavior to become “highly feared, sadistic tormentors.”
Half of the “prisoners” left the experiment early because they could not tolerate this pain.
“The pains were as much psychological — feelings of powerlessness, degradation, frustration, and emotional distress — as physical — sleep deprivation, poor diet and unhealthy living conditions,” Zimbardo and Haney wrote in American Psychologist.
Zimbardo, who played the role of prison superintendent, told Stanford News Service at the beginning of the experiment most people go through life “assuming that they have more control over their behavior than they actually do.”
“We are often unaware of the tremendous power which social situations exert upon us to shape, guide, and manipulate our behavior,” Zimbardo said in 1971.
Over the following years, Zimbardo conducted research into shyness, which he called “a form of imprisonment,” and the phenomenon known as “bystander effect” in which individuals are less likely to help someone in need if other people present. He also conducted research into cults and mind control.
He wrote in a 2002 column that mind control, when systematically practiced by the state, the military or cults, “can induce false confessions, create converts who willingly torture or kill ‘invented enemies,’ engage indoctrinated members to work tirelessly, give up their money–and even their lives–for ‘the cause.'” He later founded the Heroic Imagination Project, a nonprofit organization that seeks to promote what he called “the banality of heroism,” an idea rooted in the belief that all seemingly ordinary people are capable of performing heroic acts.
In an article for Stanford News Service, Claude Steele, a Stanford University psychology professor, called Zimbardo “one of the most prolific and influential psychologists of his generation — a true pioneer of the field of social psychology.”
“Virtually all of Phil’s research shows how important phenomena of real-life human behavior can be studied scientifically. For a young science like social psychology, this has been an especially important contribution,” Steele said.
Zimbardo retired from Stanford in 2003. Four years later, he received the Richard W. Lyman Award from the Stanford Alumni Association for his volunteer service, according to the university. Mark Lepper, former chair of the Department of Psychology, called Zimbardo a “highly decorated teacher.”
“In quarters when he taught Introduction to Psychology, lines formed around the Main Quad with students wanting to take his course,” Lepper told Stanford News Service.
Zimbardo became president of the American Psychological Association in 2002. Ten years later, the association awarded him the Gold Medal Award for Life Achievement in the Science of Psychology. His other awards include the 2006 Havel Foundation Prize and the 2015 Kurt Levin Award.
Ewart Thomas, a Stanford psychology professor and former dean of the School of Humanities, said Zimbardo was “famous for inspiring many of his students to pursue research and teaching careers in which they, like their mentor, were recognized for their distinguished teaching.”
