Philip G. Zimbardo Quotes

Situational variables can exert powerful influences over human behavior, more so that we recognize or acknowledge.

If you put good apples into a bad situation, you’ll get bad apples.

We have nothing against playing video games; they have many good features and benefits. Our concern is that when they are played to excess, especially in social isolation, they can hinder a young man's ability and interest in developing his face-to-face social skills. Multiple problems, including obesity, violence, anxiety, lower school performance, social phobia and shyness, greater impulsivity and depression, have all been associated with excessive gaming. The variety and intensity of video game action makes other parts of life, like school, seem comparatively boring, and that creates a problem with their academic performance, which in turn might require medication to deal with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), which then leads to other problems down the road in a disastrous negative cycle...

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.

I have been primarily interested in how and why ordinary people do unusual things, things that seem alien to their natures. Why do good people sometimes act evil? Why do smart people sometimes do dumb or irrational things?

Fear is the State's psychological weapon of choice to frighten citizens into sacrificing their basic freedoms and rule-of-law protections in exchange for the security promised by their all-powerful government.

Sticks and stones can break your bones, but names can kill you.

Human behavior is incredibly pliable, plastic.

Western societies want men to be upstanding, proactive citizens who take responsibility for themselves, who work with others to improve their communities and nation as a whole. The irony is that society is not giving the support, guidance, means, or places for these young men even to be motivated or interested in aspiring to these goals. In fact, society - from politics to the media to the classroom to our very own families - is a major contributor to this demise because it is inhibiting young men's intellectual, creative, and social abilities right from the start. And the irony is only compounded by the fact that men play such a powerful part in society, which means they are effectively denying their younger counterparts the opportunity to thrive.

The level of shyness has gone up dramatically in the last decade. I think shyness is an index of social pathology rather than a pathology of the individual.

The line between good and evil is permeable and almost anyone can be induced to cross it when pressured by situational forces.

Every evil starts with 15 volts.

One can't live mindfully without being enmeshed in psychological processes that are around us.

Time perspective is one of the most powerful influences on all of human behavior. We're trying to show how people become biased to being exclusively past-, present- or future-oriented.

Before I knew that a man could kill a man, because it happens all the time. Now I know that even the person with whom you've shared food, or whom you've slept, even he can kill you with no trouble. The closest neighbor can kill you with his teeth: that is what I have Learned since the genocide, and my eyes no longer gaze the same on the face of the world.

Being hurt personally triggered a curiosity about how such beliefs are formed.

We want to believe in the essential, unchanging goodness of people, in their power to resist external pressures, in their rational appraisal and then rejection of situational temptations. We invest human nature with God-like qualities, with moral and rational faculties that make us both just and wise. We simplify the complexity of human experience by erecting a seemingly impermeable boundary between Good and Evil.

Majority decisions tend to be made without engaging the systematic thought and critical thinking skills of the individuals in the group. Given the force of the group's normative power to shape the opinions of the followers who conform without thinking things through, they are often taken at face value. The persistent minority forces the others to process the relevant information more mindfully. Research shows that the deciscions of a group as a whole are more thoughtful and creative when there is minority dissent than when it is absent.