The Heroic Imagination Project

3min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

Zimbardo talks about the banality of heroism and how you train people to be heroes. He says, is i want to democratize heroism and demystify it. Most heroic acts are done by ordinary people who aren't special in any way. But if we more and more kids think, i'm a hero in waiting, that's just aristotle right there. We have hero resources in schools and summer camps where kids learn situationa savy or street smarts. They can also learn social influence skills to form a network. You have to drill virtue in into people, and then they'll be virtuous,. Then they'll be heroes, said Zimbardo.

After discussing some listener feedback about the movie Swingers, Tamler and David talk about two classic experiments in social psychology: the Milgram Experiments and the Zimbardo Prison experiment. They discuss the power of the situation, its influence on recent philosophy, and whether there is room given the evidence to believe in moral character and virtue. Also, Tamler admits to his former struggles with hard core street drugs, and Dave ponders which prison gang would be most accepting if he had to serve hard time.

Links

"Swingers," Directed by Jon Favreau [metacritic.com]

The Milgram Experiment [Wikipedia.org]

Video clip of a replication of the Milgram Experiment [youtube.com]

The Stanford Prison Experiment [Wikipedia.org]

Short video on Stanford Prison Experiment [youtube.com]

Asch Conformity Experiment [youtube.com]

Jon Doris "Lack of Character" [amazon.com]

Support Very Bad Wizards