Philip embardo is a professor of psychology at stanford university. He's the author of shyness, which together sold more than two and haf million copies. His web site w w w dot prison experiment dot org has been visited by millions every year. In this episode he talks about his 20 page response to criticisms of him and his stanford prison experiment. We also discuss free will and determinism and moral culpability. And i ask hem to put the last year and a half into perspective.
August 15 marks the 50th anniversary of day one of the Stanford Prison Experiment — one of the most controversial studies in the history of social psychology. In this conversation, Michael Shermer speaks with renowned social psychologist and creator of the Stanford Prison Experiment Philip Zimbardo, exploring the mechanisms that make good people do bad things, how moral people can be seduced into acting immorally, and what this says about the line separating good from evil. His book, The Lucifer Effect, explains why we are all susceptible to the lure of “the dark side.” and how situational forces and group dynamics can work in concert to make monsters out of decent men and women. Shermer and Zimbardo discuss: Zimbardo’s life mission to understand the nature of evil, the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) and its critics, the nature of human nature, The Dark Triad that leads to violence, obedience to authority, free will/determinism, and how we can teach ourselves to act heroically.