Philip G. Zimbardo

Philip Zimbardo is internationally recognized as the “voice and face of contemporary psychology” through his widely viewed PBS-TV series, Discovering Psychology, his media appearances, best-selling trade books, and his classic research, The Stanford Prison Experiment. Zimbardo has been a Stanford University professor since 1968 (now emeritus), having taught previously at Yale, NYU, and Columbia University. He also continues to teach at the Naval Post Graduate School in Monterey (courses on the psychology of terrorism), and is professor at the Palo Alto University (teaching social psychology to clinical graduate students). Zimbardo has been given numerous awards and honors as an educator, researcher, writer, media contributor, and for service to the profession of psychology. He has been awarded the Vaclav Havel Foundation Prize for his lifetime of research on the human condition. Among his more than 400 professional publications, including 50 trade and textbooks, is the oldest current textbook in psychology, Psychology and Life, and Core Concepts in Psychology in its 7th Edition. His popular book on shyness in adults was the first of its kind, as was the shyness clinic that he started in the community and continues as a treatment-research clinic at the Palo Alto University in Palo Alto. His current research interests are in the domain of experimental social psychology, with a scattered emphasis on: time perspective, persuasion, madness, violence, political psychology, and terrorism. His current passion is The Heroic Imagination Project, exploring and encouraging the psychology of everyday heroes. Noted for his personal and professional efforts to actually 'give psychology away to the public', Zimbardo has also been a social-political activist, challenging the Government's wars in Vietnam and Iraq, as well as the American Correctional System. Zimbardo has been President of the American Psychological Association (2002), President of the Western Psychological Association (twice), Chair of the Council of Scientific Society Presidents (CSSP), and now Chair of the Western Psychological Foundation, as well as the Director of the Center for Interdisciplinary Policy, Education, and Research on Terrorism (CIPERT). See www.zimbardo.com, www.heroicimagination.org, www.prisonexp.org, www.lucifereffect.com, and www.thetimeparadox.com.