GIVING PSYCHOLOGY AWAY Zimbardo was born in New York City on March 23, 1933.

He grew up in a South Bronx ghetto during the Great Depression, and moved 31 times while he was a child. Being poor back then was not as bad because everyone around you was also poor. And without TV, we really didnt know how rich folks lived. Poverty nevertheless took quite a toll on my body. I was a skinny bag of bones for most of my childhood and at age 6 was hospitalized for 6 months with double pneumonia (both lungs) and whooping cough. Those were the days before penicillin! Philip Zimbardo Philip G. Zimbardo is now internationally seen as the face of contemporary American psychology. He earned his PhD in social psychology from Yale University in 1959 and has since received seven honorary doctorates for his contributions to psychology and society. As the author of more than 300 publications and 50 books, Zimbardos research covers 20 topics, including shyness, evil, teaching, persuasion, hypnosis, dissonance, time perspective, and heroism. His aim to give psychology away is evident in all he does. ZIMBARDOS TAKE ON MODERN PSYCHOLOGY In psychology, there has always been a strong desire to be biological or physical. They aim to make psychology more like a real science, but Im not convinced that getting peoples brains to light up in a scanner is any more scientific than conducting interviews that uncover important phenomena Philip Zimbardo The boundaries of psychology are expanding to include multiple systems and levels of analysis, and the benefits of this has been seen in increased integration in fields like health psychology and social cognitive neuroscience. At the same time, Zimbardo feels it is important not to get so fascinated by technology that you abandon theory or reduce explanation for complex social phenomena to the activation of particular voxels in the brain. In this hand, Zimbardo prefers to collect data through method of observation, from first hand experience, and especially in field experiments. THE 1971 STANFORD PRISON EXPERIMENT. Zimbardos most notable study was the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment, which was a classic demonstration of the power of social situations to distort personal identities, values and morality. Zimbardo and his team set out to test the idea that the inherent personality traits of prisoners and guards were key in understanding abusive prison situations. Participants were recruited and told they would participate in a two-week "prison simulation." Of the 70 respondents, Zimbardo and his team selected the 24 males whom they deemed to be the most psychologically stable and healthy. These participants were predominantly white and middle-class. The "prison" itself was in the basement of Stanford's Jordan Hall, which had been converted into a mock jail. An undergraduate research assistant was the "warden" and

Zimbardo the "superintendent". Zimbardo set up a number of specific conditions on the participants which he hoped would promote disorientation and deindividualisation. The researchers provided weaponswooden batons -- and clothing that simulated that of a prison guardkhaki shirt and pants. They were also given mirrored sunglasses to prevent eye contact. Prisoners wore ill-fitting smocks and stocking caps, rendering them constantly uncomfortable. Guards called prisoners by their assigned numbers, sewn on their uniforms, instead of by name. A chain around their ankles reminded them of their roles as prisoners. DAY 1 The researchers held an "orientation" session for guards the day before the experiment, during which they were told that they Zimbardo is seen telling the guards, "You can create in the prisoners feelings of boredom, a sense of fear to some degree; you can create a notion of arbitrariness that their life is totally controlled by us, by the system, you, me, and they'll have no privacy We're going to take away their individuality in various ways. In general what all this leads to is a sense of powerlessness. That is, in this situation we'll have all the power and they'll have none." The participants chosen to play the part of prisoners were "arrested" at their homes and "charged" with armed robbery. The local police department assisted Zimbardo with the arrests and conducted full booking procedures on the prisoners, including fingerprinting and taking mug shots. They were then transported to the mock prison where they were strip-searched and given their new identities. DAY 2 After a relatively uneventful first day, a riot broke out on the second day. The guards volunteered to work extra hours and worked together to break the prisoner revolt, attacking the prisoners with fire extinguishers without supervision from the research staff. After only 36 hours, Philip Zimbardo says: #8612 then began to act "crazy," to scream, to curse, to go into a rage that seemed out of control. It took a while before the researchers were convinced that he was really suffering and that he had to be released. A false rumor spread that #8612, who was now out of the experiment, would lead companions to free the rest of the prisoners. The guards dismantled the prison and moved the inmates to another secure location. When no breakout attempt occurred, the guards were angry about having to rebuild the prison, so they took it out on the prisoners.

DAY 3 The Treatment of Prisoners: DAY 4 On the fourth day, some prisoners were talking about trying to escape. Zimbardo and the guards attempted to move the prisoners to the more secure local police station, but officials there said they could no longer participate in Zimbardo's experiment . Several guards became increasingly cruel as the experiment continued. Experimenters said that approximately one-third of the guards exhibited genuine sadistic tendencies. DAY 5 Prisoner No. 416, a newly admitted prisoner, expressed concern over the treatment of the other prisoners. The guards responded with more abuse. When he refused to eat his sausages, saying he was on a hunger strike, guards confined him in a closet (solitary confinement). The guards used this incident to turn the other prisoners against No. 416, saying the only way he would be released from solitary confinement was if they gave up their blankets and slept on their bare mattresses, which all but one refused to do. DAY 6 Zimbardo observed that the participants had internalized their roles, based on the fact that some had stated that they would accept parole even without pay. Zimbardo argued they had no reason for continued participation in the experiment after having lost all monetary compensation, yet they did, because they had internalized the prisoner identity, they thought themselves prisoners, hence, they stayed. Guards forced the prisoners to count off repeatedly as a way to learn their prison numbers, and to reinforce the idea that this was their new identity. Guards soon used these prisoner counts as another method to harass the prisoners, using physical punishment for errors in the count. Sanitary conditions declined rapidly, made worse by the guards refusing to allow some prisoners to urinate or defecate. As punishment, the guards would not let the prisoners empty the sanitation bucket. Mattresses were a valued item, so the guards would punish prisoners by removing their mattresses, leaving them to sleep on concrete. Some prisoners were forced to go nude as a method of degradation.

CONCLUSIONS The planned two-week investigation into the psychology of prison life was ended prematurely after only six days because of what the situation was doing to the college students who participated. In only a few days, the guards became sadistic and prisoners became depressed, showing signs of extreme stress. The experiment's result has been argued to demonstrate the obedience of people when provided with a legitimizing ideology and institutional support. It is also used to illustrate the power of authority. It seemed the situation caused the participants' behaviour, rather than anything inherent in their individual personalities. In this way, it is compatible with the results of the renowned Milgram experiment, in which ordinary people fulfilled orders to administer what appeared to be damaging electric shocks to a confederate of the experimenter. CRITICISM OF THE EXPERIMENT The experiment was widely criticized as being unethical and unscientific. Current ethical standards of psychology would not permit such a study to be conducted today. Because it was a field experiment, it was impossible to keep traditional scientific controls. Dr Zimbardo was not merely a neutral observer, but influenced the direction of the experiment as its "superintendent". Conclusions and observations drawn by the experimenters were largely subjective and anecdotal, and the experiment would be difficult for other researchers to reproduce. Some of the experiment's critics argued that participants based their behavior on how they were expected to behave, or modelled it after stereotypes they already had about the behavior of prisoners and guards. In response, Zimbardo claimed that even if there was role-playing initially, participants internalized these roles as the experiment continued. Additionally, many of the conditions imposed in the experiment were arbitrary and may not have related to actual prison conditions, including blindfolding incoming "prisoners", not allowing them to wear underwear, not allowing them to look out of windows and not allowing them to use their names. Zimbardo argued that prison is a confusing and dehumanizing experience and that it was necessary to enact these procedures to put the "prisoners" in the appropriate frame of mind. ZIMBARDOS THEORIES ON: SHYNESS: Zimbardos interest in the social dynamics of shyness in adults emerged curiously from reflections on the Stanford Prison Experiment, when considering the mentality of the Guard (restricting freedoms) and Prisoner (resisting, but ultimately accepting those restrictions on personal freedom). Since 1972, Zimbardos research team has done pioneering research on the causes, correlates, and consequences of shyness in adults and children, using a multi-method, multi-response approach.

VIOLENCE/EVIL: Zimbardos interest in understanding the dynamics of human aggression and violence stems from early personal experiences growing up amid the violence of the South Bronx ghetto where he was born and raised. He first developed a model that specified a set of input and output variables that predicted the cause and consequences of this temporary state of violence. Experimental and field research on vandalism and graffiti have generally supported this model. This research has broadened to include the psychology of terrorism. MADNESS: Zimbardo has been intrigued by the question of how people who are functioning normally and effectively first begin to develop the symptoms of psychopathology.

ZIMBARDOS STANFORD PRISON QUESTIONNAIRE What police procedures are used during arrests, and how do these procedures lead people to feel confused, fearful, and dehumanized? If you were a guard, what type of guard would you have become? How sure are you? What prevented "good guards" from objecting or countermanding the orders from tough or bad guards? If you were a prisoner, would you have been able to endure the experience? What would you have done differently than those subjects did? If you were imprisoned in a "real" prison for five years or more, could you take it? Why did our prisoners try to work within the arbitrary prison system to effect a change in it (e.g., setting up a Grievance Committee), rather than trying to dismantle or change the system through outside help? What factors would lead prisoners to attribute guard brutality to the guards' disposition or character, rather than to the situation? What is identity? Is there a core to your self-identity independent of how others define you? How difficult would it be to remake any given person into someone with a new identity? Moving beyond physical prisons built of steel and concrete, what psychological prisons do we create for ourselves and others? If prisons are seen as forms of control which limit individual freedom, how do they differ from the prisons we create through racism, sexism, ageism, poverty, and other social institutions?
Slavich, M. George. On 50 Years of Giving Psychology Away, 2009 [On-line] Available:http://www.evolutionofpsychotherapy.com/pages/handouts/50_years_of_giving_psychology_away. pdf (Date of Access: 30.01.10) Zimbardo, Philip. Stanford Prison Experiment, 2009 [On-line] Available: http://www.prisonexp.org/ (Date of Access: 01.02.19) Zimbardo, Philip. Professor Philip G Zimbardo, 2009 [On-line] Available: http://www.zimbardo.com (Date of Access: 03.02.19) Author unavailable, Influence of Social Roles: The Stanford Prison Experiment, 2009 [On-line] Available: http://www.psychologistworld.com/influence_personality/stanfordprison.php (Date of Access: 03.02.10)