Social Psychologist Philip Zimbardo (b. 1933) Zimbardo grew up in an immigrant family in a poor neighborhood in the South Bronx, an experience that sensitized him to the power of situational influences and the destructive nature of stereotypes and prejudice (Zimbardo, 2005, 2007).

Zimbardo’s research has ranged from attitude change to shyness, prison reform, and the psychology of evil. As Zimbardo (2000b) observes, “The joy of being a psychologist is that almost everything in life is psychology, or should be, or could be.” Later in the chapter, we’ll encounter Zimbardo’s most famous—and controversial—research: a study known as the “Stanford Prison Experiment.”

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