Philip G Zimbardo‚ the psychologist who led the well-known “Stanford Prison Experiment“ has died at 91. Stanford University shared the news that Zimbardo passed away on 10/14/24 at his San Francisco home
The Stanford Prison Experiment‚ carried out about 53 years ago aimed to look into the mental effects of being in prison. Zimbardo and his grad students got college-age guys to be part of a fake prison in a Stanford building basement. The study which was meant to last 2 weeks‚ stopped after 6 days. This happened because the “guards“ started to be mean‚ and the “prisoners“ got upset and angry
Zimbardo got criticized for being the prison boss in the study – he took part instead of just watching. “We didnt expect our study to turn out like that“ Zimbardo later wrote with a grad student who helped out
Now‚ psychology classes use this experiment to teach about:
- The psychology of bad behavior
- Ethics in doing research with people
Zimbardo also looked into other stuff like:
- How to convince people
- Hypnosis
- Cults
- Being shy
- How we see time
- Helping others
- Being kind
Zimbardo is survived by Christina Maslach Zimbardo (his wife) three kids and four grandkids