#philip zimbardo

[probablyasocialecologist]

Recent research found the cruelty of Zimbardo’s prison guards didn’t emerge spontaneously; some behaviour was encouraged. Some of the “prisoners” later admitted that they were pretending to be distressed. Similarly, a study published in 2007 found that the 1964 incident that inspired the theory of the bystander effect was distorted. According to the paper, archive material shows far fewer people witnessed the incident than was reported at the time, and some people could only hear screams, without seeing the location of the incident. At least one person did try to intervene. Recent research indicates that bystanders are much more likely to intervene than the theory suggests. A 2019 study of 219 violent situations from cities around the world caught on CCTV showed that bystanders – not just one, usually several – intervened to help victims 90% of the time. The study also found that the more people were present, the more likely passers-by were to intervene. In the words of the study’s lead researcher, Richard Philpot: “It shows that people have a natural inclination to help when they see someone in need.” The burgeoning field of “heroism studies” also questions the bystander effect. In a recent article for The Conversation, I described how acts of heroic altruism are common during terrorist attacks, when people often risk their own lives to help others. Consider the following situation: you’re standing on a train platform. The person next to you suddenly faints and falls on to the track, unconscious. In the distance, you can see a train approaching. What would you do? You might doubt whether you would act heroically. But don’t underestimate yourself. There is a strong possibility that, before you knew it, you would find yourself on down on the track, helping the person to safety. There is a growing awareness amongst researchers that heroism is natural and spontaneous, and by no means exceptional.

[aethyrmazz]

An opinion widely held is not evidence of truth.

To add to my little athenaeum, "The Lucifer Effect Understanding How Good People Turn Evil" by Philip Zimbardo published 2007. Experimental psychology. This book focuses on how environmental factors influence individuals to behave immorally, rather than their inherent personal traits.

Being a psychology buff, I myself have turned to the use of psychological manipulation which refers to control tactics that we may use to influence a person's thinkings, emotions, or behaviors. Typically this is done for the manipulators benefit, for persuasion, even personal growth, often done to just prove a point, sometimes done for the sake of chaos (f**k you if you do this)

[origami-butterfly]

Christina Maslach, poster girl of the "I can fix him" movement.

[kani-miso]

@blitz0hno

[proceduralbob]

That means when you read about the SPE or the many studies in this next section, you might well conclude that you would not do what the majority has done, that you would, of course, be the exception to the rule. That statistically unreasonable belief (since most of us share it) makes you even more vulnerable to situational forces precisely because you underestimate their power as you overestimate yours. You are convince you would be the good guard, the defiant prisoner, the resistor, the dissident, the nonconformist, and, most of all, the Hero. Would that it were so, but heroes are a rare breed.

The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Turn Evil, Philip G. Zimbardo

[roomselfcontain2]

A very sharp standard low budget cheap affordable income one bedroom house apartment for rent very neat and cool houses available now as pay and parking immediately all major components in this house is working located at rumuekini new layout in port Harcourt city rivers state Nigeria.

[polynesianpen]

i’m a fucking sucker for this book. i got it a couple years ago after watch the Stanford Prison Experiment movie. it’s pretty beat up and outlined but i’ve yet to finish it although I am determined to finish it within the next month or so.

[dreamy-conceit]

Heroes are those who can somehow resist the power of the situation and act out of noble motives, or behave in ways that do not demean others when they easily can.

— Dr Philip Zimbardo, architect of the Stanford Prison Experiment

[gillianthecat]

@emotionallychargedtowel here's Zimbardo being a weirdo again.

He could have chosen any two stimuli to pair. And he settled on these.

[maniwantmango]

Lowkey obsessed with Zimbardo's Prison Study and seeing how much people claim they wouldn't have conformed. Like damn, so did the participants ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[j4unw3]

source

"The transmogrification of good people into monsters''

Philip Zimbardo ♤ The Lucifer Effect; 2009

[musicalmoritz]

Wasn’t gonna drink tonight but I’m lowkey missing Philip Zimbardo like a mf😔🕊️

[ilpensierononlineare-10]

(via Philip Zimbardo)

Il 14 ottobre è morto Philip Zimbardo professore emerito alla Stanford University e direttore dello Stanford Center on Interdisciplinary Policy.

Zimbardo è stato uno degli Psicologi più influenti del secolo scorso e di questo secolo. Con le sue ricerche e i suoi esperimenti, ha rivoluzionato il modo di intendere la Psicologia Sociale attraverso lo studio del comportamento umano quando vi è l’influenza del gruppo d’appartenenza sociale..

(Continua a leggere sul Blog..)

[consuetudinari0]

mind-control project

mind-control project Is a complex and controversial topic: Discussing its ethical implications, scientific research, or perhaps fictional portrayals in literature and media! Regarding my Eight digital publication: continue with the postmodernist sequence of mass distribution, inherited from the printing press to upload —-my Apple of knowledge—, in the branch of free knowledge, without an…

[triforcevillains]

Stanford Prison Experiment (2015) Die US-amerikanischen Psychologen Philip Zimbardo, Craig Haney und Curtis Banks führten im Jahr 1971 ein Experiment an den Studenten der Stanford University durch.

Um das Verhalten zwischen Gefängnisinsassen und Wärtern zu erforschen, wurden die 24 Studenten jeweils in eine der beiden Rollen eingeteilt. Die Psychologen ließen ein kleines Gefängnis einrichten, in dem die Studenten den Versuch ausübten. Was folgt, wird in Kyle Patrick Alvarez´ Film festfehalten: Jene Studenten, die in die Rollen der Wärter eingeteilt sind, verfallen ihrer Rolle voll und ganz, vor allem der damit verbundenen Machtstellung. Sie fangen an, die Studenten, die die Gefangenen darstellen, zu erniedrigen und gar zu foltern.

Das Experiment muss in der Folge frühzeitig abgebrochen werden und geht bis heute in die Geschichte ein, als eine grauenvolle Darstellung menschlichen Verhaltens. (8/10)

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

Bounded Choice: The Illusion of Autonomy in High-Control Systems – A Tribute to Philip Zimbardo

This essay was written in honor of Dr. Philip Zimbardo, who died on October 14, 2024, at the age of 91. Dr. Zimbardo was best known for his theory that situational and systemic factors can lead ordinary people to commit harmful or immoral acts. Zimbardo’s research focused on the psychology of evil, which included studies on “the Lucifer Effect,” deindividuation, and the Bystander Effect. His work was particularly relevant to our understanding of the dehumanization and abuses of Muslim prisoners by American soldiers who were guards at the Abu Ghraib prison in 2003 during America’s “War on Terror.” Here the author illustrates the ways in which her own theoretical work both gained from and intersected with Zimbardo’s work.        On May 17, 1993, I stood before Dr. Philip Zimbardo’s psychology class at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, my hands trembling slightly as I prepared to speak publicly1 about my cult experience for the first time. Dr. Zimbardo had invited me to share my story, seemingly understanding intuitively what I would later spend decades researching and articulating: that intelligent, educated people can find themselves making seemingly incomprehensible choices when caught in systems of cultic dynamics and coercive control.

That day marked the beginning of my public journey from survivor to scholar, though I didn’t know it then. As I described the incremental process through which my autonomy had been constrained within the political cult I’d belonged to, I saw in the students’ faces the same question that I was grappling with: “How could someone let this happen to them?” It was a question that would eventually lead me to develop the concept of bounded choice—a theoretical framework that would both complement and extend Zimbardo’s groundbreaking work on the power of situational forces in shaping human behavior.3

Just as Zimbardo’s famous Stanford Prison Experiment2 revealed how ordinary college students could be transformed by the roles and rules imposed upon them, my research, which culminated in my bounded choice theory, would demonstrate how high-functioning individuals can become entrapped in a web of constraints that progressively narrow their thought processes and perception of available options. The parallels between our findings, though arrived at through drastically different methodological paths, illuminate a crucial truth about human nature: context and constraint are often more powerful than character.

Standing in that auditorium, packed with several hundred students, I was still years away from fully understanding the theoretical implications of my experience. However, Dr. Zimbardo’s work on situational forces had already provided a crucial foundation for comprehending how otherwise reasonable people could engage in behaviors that seemed, to outside observers, both extreme and inexplicable. His research demonstrated that individual behavior cannot be understood in isolation from its context—a principle that would become central to my doctoral research and the resultant concept of bounded choice. Early on, Zimbardo was a much-respected contributor to society’s understanding of cults and cultic dynamics and behavior. 

The Concept of Bounded Choice The students who participated in the Stanford Prison Experiment, like the members of the political cult I had belonged to, didn’t arrive with predetermined dispositions toward authoritarianism or submission. Instead, they found themselves responding to an increasingly restrictive environment that shaped their perceptions, choices, and ultimately their actions. What Zimbardo demonstrated in a compressed timeframe in his experiment, I had lived through for more than ten years: the gradual construction of a closed system of meaning and behavior that made previously unthinkable choices seem not only reasonable but necessary.

Bounded choice4 theory emerged from my need to explain and elucidate how such a transformation occurs—not just in the artificial confines of an experiment, but also in the real-world contexts of cults, domestic abuse, and other coercive environments. While Zimbardo showed how situation could triumph over disposition, my work would go on to map the specific mechanisms through which these situations create transcendent (extreme) belief systems, self-sealing systems of logic, and the systematic narrowing of acceptable behaviors and perceived choices.

That day, standing before Dr. Zimbardo’s class, marked my first step toward bridging the gap between lived experience and theoretical understanding. His willingness to platform a survivor’s voice—to recognize that personal testimony could contribute meaningfully to psychological understanding—exemplified the kind of boundary-crossing scholarship that would characterize both our approaches to understanding human behavior under constraint.

The parallels between Zimbardo’s findings and the bounded choice theory become particularly striking when we examine how both frameworks illuminate the process of personal transformation under systematic constraints. In the Stanford Prison Experiment, Zimbardo documented how student “guards” gradually adopted increasingly authoritarian behaviors, while “prisoners” became progressively more passive and dependent. This transformation didn’t happen overnight. Rather, it occurred through a series of small steps, each building upon the last, until participants found themselves acting in ways they never would have predicted.

Similarly, bounded choice theory explains how individuals in cultic and coercive groups undergo a comparable transformation through four interlocking dimensions: the transcendent belief system, the systems of control, the systems of influence, and the closed system of logic, all orchestrated by the so-called charismatic leader (aka authoritarian ruler). Like Zimbardo’s guards and prisoners, cult members don’t suddenly abandon their previous values and behaviors. Instead, they experience a gradual reshaping of their reality through these four dimensions, each reinforcing the others until their choices become increasingly constrained within the group’s framework of meaning.

TO BE CONTINUED

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What is Bounded Choice?

VIDEO: Why do people join cults? – Janja Lalich