How Good People Turn Evil

The 2007 Girard Lecture with Dr. Philip Zimbardo at Scripps College

Philip Zimbardo, Stanford University professor emeritus of psychology and designer of the famed Stanford Prison Experiment, will talk on the findings of his latest book, The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, Monday, March 26, 5:30 p.m., in Garrison Theater, Scripps College Performing Arts Center. Part of the Marion Jane Girard Lecture Series at Scripps College, the event is free and open to the public.

Zimbardo designed his Stanford Prison Experiment, in 1971, to investigate the psychology of prison life. The experiment was a classic demonstration of the power of social situations to distort personal identities and long-cherished values and morality. Originally planning the experiment to last two weeks, Zimbardo called a halt after only six days when the participants became too engrossed in their simulated roles; guards became sadistic, and prisoners became depressed and extremely stressed. A prize-winning DVD, Quiet Rage: The Stanford Prison Experiment, is widely used in classrooms, civic groups, and to train new guards at Abu Ghraib.

Zimbardo’s best-selling introductory psychology textbook, Psychology and Life, is now in its 18th edition. His popular book Shyness: What it is and what to do about it was the first of its kind, as was the shyness clinic he started. He also designed, co-wrote, and hosted the PBS educational series Discovering Psychology.

His current research on the psychology of time perspective focuses on the ways in which individuals develop temporal orientations that parcel the flow of personal experience into mental categories, or time zones, of past, present, and future and also a transcendental future (beliefs about life after one’s death).