Zimbardo Unbound*

Zimbardo Unbound*

Presented Thursday afternoon, August 25, 2011, in the Stanford University Alumni Center

Philip Zimbardo, Ph.D., is an emeritus professor of psychology at Stanford University. Although he is probably best known as director of the famous (and infamous) 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment and an expert witness in Abu Ghraib prison trials, he has many areas of research in social psychology, and we were about to be introduced to three topics:

·       Creating evil in a lab

·       Exploring time in our lives

·       Inspiring heroism everywhere

Creating Evil in a Lab

Indicating that poverty is the main evil in the world (breeding temptations as well as evil), Zimbardo has always wanted to know about this:

·       Is the line between good and evil fixed and impermeable, so that good people are safe from crossing over to the bad side? Or…

·       Is the line between good and evil permeable, allowing flow across the boundary in both directions, so that good people can turn evil and evil people can become good again?

What makes people go wrong? Can it be prevented? Zimbardo defined the “Lucifer Effect,” saying that God was into conflict resolution. But in addition to creating Heaven, He created Hell as a place to store evil. Zimbardo’s Lucifer Effect is a celebration of the mind’s infinite capacity to make us behave:

·       Kind or cruel

·       Caring or indifferent

·       Creative or destructive

and make us villains or heroes. (Read more at http://www.lucifereffect.com/.)

We understand a definition of evil as an exercise and abuse of power to intentionally harm. However, there’s also an evil of inaction—the bystander effect. The greater the number of bystanders (e.g., to bullying), the less likely people will offer to help. This is demonstrated with a diffusion of responsibility, e.g., with the September 2010 PG&E pipeline explosion in San Bruno and a recent gang rape of a teenaged girl.

Here’s a very dangerous question:

·       Would you electrocute a stranger if Hitler asked you to?

This question demonstrates the issue of authority. “All evil begins with 15 volts.” Role (e.g., teacher vs. student) is important. What happens when you put good people in a bad place? In the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, students were asked if they wanted to be prisoners or guards. No one wanted to be a guard. So Zimbardo randomly assigned the roles to 24 normal and healthy students. He arranged for arrests by the Palo Alto Police Department, and students were “locked up” in the basement of the Psychology Building. Guards wore silver-reflecting sunglasses so that they would never make eye contact with the prisoners. Prisoners were assigned humiliating tasks such as cleaning toilet bowls. The abuse they received was increased daily.  Prisoners were subjected to sex games and degradation. Having spun out of control, Zimbardo stopped the experiment after six days. (It was scheduled to run for two weeks but ended after the first kid freaked out.) Read more at http://www.prisonexp.org/.

Government officials said that the 2004 Abu Ghraib Prison scandal was due to a few bad apples. Zimbardo contends (and contended in court) that the soldiers were good but the barrel was bad. He says that the situation corrupted the abusers.  Abuses did not happen on day shifts. He describes the powers of situations and systems:

·       Individual – personal disposition (“bad apples”)

·       Situational – social and physical environment (“bad barrel”)

·       System – organizational influences such as political, economic, cultural, and legal

The Stanford Prison Experiment ended such studies.

The Time Paradox

·       Future Time – Focus on positives

·       Past Time – Focus on negatives

·       Present Time Paradox – Hedonism and fatalism

Zimbardo then talked about the time paradox and how time perspectives govern our lives. Life is temptation. He demonstrated past focus and future focus with a film showing 4-year-olds who were tempted with candy. A child could get one candy now, but if s/he waited until Zimbarbo returned from a quick trip out of the room, s/he would get two candies (actually, marshmallows). This was his colleague’s study (“The Marshmallow Experiment”). With follow up inquiries over the years, the researcher learned that the kids who were willing to wait for the second marshmallow scored 250 points higher on SATs!

Education always makes present-oriented children more future-oriented. Future-oriented people live longer. (Think about it: Future-oriented people schedule annual physicals and dental exams.) On the other hand, a person who is too future-oriented is liable to be a workaholic. Zimbardo adds: “At work, time is the most important thing in the world. At home, it’s the most precious.” Zimbardo worries about this: Twenty years ago, 60% of families had sit-down dinners together. Now, only 20% of families have sit-down dinners together. Read more about Zimbardo’s Time Paradox at http://www.thetimeparadox.com/.

Also visit www.ted.com to see Zimbardo’s presentation on The Time Paradox and a newer aspect of the topic: Why boys and men are failing academically, socially, and sexually. Zimbardo adds: “All addictions are addictions to present hedonism.” And he points that children no longer wear wristwatches because of their being single function devices.

Inspiring Heroism Everywhere

How do we train people to be more future-oriented? Let us inspire more everyday people to become heroes. Dr. Zimbardo is upset that there’s no research on heroism, saying that the word is missing from indices of psychology books.

He endorses shifting social norms like this: FortifyàInspireàCoach. He believes that heroism is teachable, coachable.

What does it take to be a hero? It’s ordinary, everyday people doing extra-ordinary actions. President Obama says, “Stand up, speak out!” Rosa Parks did and the young people in Egypt do demonstrate heroism. The heroic imagination can be put to work, as demonstrated by the Chinese 9-year-old who saved two classmates in an earthquake. (Why did he do his heroic act? Because he was the hall monitor, he said.)

It is time for us to promote moral courage and the concept of heroic imagination. Heroism is the antidote to public indifference.

Evil and heroism have similar components. Classic heroes are solo male warriors or singular adventurers. Zimbardo offers a new conception of heroism, in which anyone can be a hero.

We are invited to participate in HIP in action:

·       Provide funds for research on all aspects of heroism

·       Develop Hero educational curricula; help a child get someone in his family to stop smoking

·       Facilitate public engagement to create HIP communities throughout the world, with interactive exercises

·       Participate in corporate initiatives: creating Cultures of Integrity (he just finished one at Google)

Become a HIPster and read more about the Heroic Imagination Project (HIP) at http://heroicimagination.org/.

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^* Title taken from http://www.stanfordalumni.org/news/magazine/2007/mayjun/features/zimbardo.html. It still seems like an appropriate title!