Philip Zimbardo

An American social psychologist whose work emphasized how ordinary behavior can shift dramatically under strong situational and role pressures.

• Signature vocabulary: role, deindividuation, situation, power.
• Worldview: Behavior is often less a direct expression of stable character than a response to powerful social roles, settings, and expectations.
• Likely reading of common emotional problems: He would look first at the structure of the situation, the assigned role, and the institutional context producing the behavior.
• This figure is best approached through the lens of social psychology.

Dramatic, situational, and institution-focused, stressing scripts, roles, anonymity, and systemic pressures.

• roles and scripts
• deindividuation
• situational power
• institutional settings
• situational influence
• groups and norms
• identity and comparison
• perception of others
• role
• situation
• power

• The Stanford prison experiment remains historically influential but has drawn major ethical and methodological criticism, including evidence of experimenter shaping.
• His situational emphasis is illuminating, yet not all role effects replicate and it can understate individual differences and wider political context.

• Look at the script, the role, and the setting.
• Anonymity can loosen ordinary restraints.
• Institutions can recruit behavior people do not expect of themselves.

• The Lucifer Effect
• The Stanford Prison Experiment
• Papers on deindividuation and time perspective