Philip Zimbardo
speaker
81 appearances
2 recordings
2 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard Apr 2025
Philip Zimbardo’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
When I came out of the hospital because I was really sick, I used to get beaten up all the time, also because I looked Jewish. And then I realized that the world is made up of leaders and followers, and followers are going to get beaten up. So I really, as a 6, 7, 10-year-old kid, started trying to understand what was it about some kids who got to be leaders.
And I think I figured out a kind of recipe. They were bigger. They were the first ones to talk up. They usually had a joke. They usually had a big, stronger guy backing them up. And they always gave the group some interesting activities.
In order to get into the gang, and the gang was the kids on the block, the newest kid had to physically fight the most recent kid who was in the gang until one of you got a bloody nose. And I hated violence. I could see it's the stupidness of these kind of rituals. Philip also noticed how hierarchy worked in groups. Some kids give orders, some kids follow orders.
And I thought, you know, typically the orders they follow are stupid. But once you get used to that, it becomes a habit.
But it was really structuring situations, being the one that came up with a new idea to say, hey, marble season should be always boring. Why don't we do stickball? So essentially, it's coming up with the idea of what to do that other kids would say, yeah, that's interesting, let's do it.
He won all the medals at graduation, so obviously nobody liked him because we were all envious of him. But he was super smart and super serious.
He was worried that the Holocaust could happen again in America. And everybody said, Stanley, that was Nazi Germany. That was then. We're not that kind of people. And he would say, I'll bet they thought the same thing. And the bottom line, he says, how do you know how you would act unless you're in the situation? Because we all think we're good people.
If you're middle class, you don't do things for money because your parents give you the money. If you're poor, nobody's going to give you things. So if you want to buy sneakers, then somebody comes on the court and says, hey, carry this package down the other and give it to some guy named Charlie.
Well, you knew it had to be something illegal because they're going to give you $10 to carrying a package down the street. But you also knew that if you got caught, there would be consequences. And I was tempted. I could use $10. I mean, you know, I used to work in a laundry truck, you know, delivering laundry in Harlem. You know, I think we got $2 a day or something.
So the temptation is always there.
The brilliance of the experiment is that the teacher is sitting in front of a shock box with 30 switches. The first switch is only 15 volts. When you press a button, the learner who's in another room experiences some minimal level of shock. And then of these 30 switches, the increment is 15 volts, 15, 30, 45, et cetera. And the person doesn't respond until it gets up to nearly 100.
But the problem is that you are now in a slippery slope down. So each increment is not noticeable from the previous. And so now when you hit 100 and the guys start to say, hey, that really hurts, you're only slightly different from where you were. And at some point, you realize you should have stopped soon at.
who we are is really shaped not so much by somebody telling you what to do and not to do. It's really that we play roles. We're a student, we're a teacher, we're a worker. And those roles are always in some setting. And within those, you belong to some subgroups. Initially, you're with the new workers, you're with the freshmen and so forth.
And I said, so that's where we really want to study how power operates.
I said, well, what kind of setting could we use to illustrate that? Now, you could have done a summer camp. In fact, since I did my experiment, many people have written to me saying, oh my God, I was in a summer camp where the counselors were brutal guards. But I thought prison because prisons are all about power. Prison.
It's 1971. These are anti-war activists. These are civil rights activists. Everybody's got hair down to here, not only long hair, and nobody wanted to be a guard. Guards are pigs. I didn't go to college to become a prison guard.
We want them to own the prison, okay? And so what it means is we go with them to buy uniforms at army, navy stores. They have military kind of uniform. We give them symbols of power, handcuffs, billy clubs, whistles. And then I imposed an interesting, subtle piece from the movie Cool Hand Luke.
Namely, everybody, when they were in contact with the prisoners, had to wear silver-reflecting sunglasses. which means that nobody can see your eyes.
I recruited the Palo Alto Police Department, the Rio Police Department, to make simulated arrests, to go to each kid's place, ask for the name of the kid, and then give them their Miranda rights. You have a right to remain silent, a right for a lawyer. And then bring them down to where the squad car is with lights flashing, lean them against the car, handcuff them, give them their rights again.
And again, neighbors and everybody's looking around.
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