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From Dr. Evil to hero maker: Philip Zimbardo
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of San Francisco Chronicle (San Francisco's leading newspaper)
Posted: April 29th, 2018
https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/From-Dr-Evil-to-...
Philip Zimbardo is understandably tired of being associated with the darker sides of human behavior. Yet the 85-year-old San Francisco psychologist, who taught at Stanford for 50 years ... knows that history has a way of flattening careers into one landmark accomplishment. For Zimbardo, that would be the 1971 Stanford Prison Experiment. Zimbardo devised a mock jail in the basement of Stanfords Jordan Hall to study the psychology of imprisonment. All hell broke loose ... and Zimbardo, the warden, abruptly cut the study short. Ever since, his prison experiment has been cultural shorthand for proof [that] depersonalized circumstances [can turn] anyone temporarily into a tyrant. Embedded within Zimbardos findings on the banality of evil was the kernel of a vastly more positive and, he believes, more broadly consequential idea: heroism training. If essentially good people are capable of evil, then cant any of us also be inspired and trained to act heroically? he asks. The Heroic Imagination Project was launched in 2010. I worked with a team of academics to develop six three-hour-long lessons on transforming passive bystanders into active heroes, [Zimbardo said]. The key to awakening everyones heroic instincts, Zimbardo said, is twofold: first, redefining who a hero is. We must ... promote the idea that heroes are ordinary people who take extraordinary action. Second, its about having a ... belief that our abilities and aptitudes arent static but can be developed over time.
Note: Watch a video of Zimbardo's talk titled, "What Makes a Hero?." Explore an excellent essay on moving beyond duality which talks about Zimbardo's experiments.
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