Renowned Psychologist Philip Zimbardo Passed Away

Philip Zimbardo, a prominent figure in the field of psychology, passed away on October 14. Zimbardo was perhaps most famously known for his involvement in the Stanford prison experiment, which explored individuals’ willingness to obey commands from authority figures even when those commands could harm others. The experiment, despite its controversial nature, has had a lasting impact on the field and beyond, often being cited in discussions about human behavior and ethics.

In 2003, Zimbardo was awarded the Ig Nobel Prize, a parodic award that honors unusual or trivial achievements in scientific research. He shared this award with colleagues Gian Vittorio Caprara and Claudio Barbaranelli for their report published in the journal ‘Nature‘. The award ceremony was held at Harvard University, where Zimbardo received the prize from Nobel laureate Rich Roberts. The ceremony is famously known for its light-hearted and unconventional approach, with participants often engaging in humorous presentations.

Remarkably, Zimbardo was high school classmates with another renowned psychologist, Stanley Milgram, known for his own controversial obedience experiments. Milgram, along with Leonard Bickman and Lawrence Berkowitz, conducted an experiment documenting how people on a city street would stop and look upward if they saw strangers doing so. This study was published in the ‘Journal of Personality and Social Psychology’ in 1969. Like Zimbardo, Milgram was also recognized with an Ig Nobel Prize for a different psychological experiment.