Overview and Meaning of Zimbardo's Prison Experiment Have you ever wondered why ordinary people do unusual things that seem alien to their nature? Why do good people sometimes behave badly? Who are the smart people who sometimes do stupid or irrational things? Zimbardo is one of the most significant social psychologists and all his work aims to find the answers to these questions. The purpose of this article is to delve deeper into the previous prison experiment, how it happened, and how the results play a role in today's society. The Life and Times of Zimbardo Philip George Zimbardo was born in New York City on March 23, 1933. His parents originally emigrated from a small town called Cammarata, about 40 miles from Palermo, Sicily. In the United States his father was an electrician and his mother was a stay-at-home mom who took care of Zimbardo, his sister Vera and two other brothers George Jr. and Donald. After attending James Monroe High School in the Bronx, Zimbardo went on to receive his Bachelor's Degree in Sociology and Psychology in 1954. Not only that, but he also attended Yale University to earn his Master's Degree in 1955 and his Ph. D. in 1959, both in psychology. Zimbardo would later teach at Columbia University but after just a year he moved on to teach at Stanford University in 1968 and has been there ever since. “Zimbardo's research includes prisons, time, shyness, madness, violence/evil, persuasion, dissonance, hypnosis and teaching. Philip continues research in the fields of social psychology, personality and abnormal psychology." (1) Zimbardo has authored more than 200 articles and has received numerous awards from Stanford for all of his teaching and work. He was also elected president of the American Psychological Association in 2002. ...... middle of paper ......psycweb/history/zimbardo.htm#Biography>.Zimbardo, Philip. The Lucifer Effect: Understanding How Good People Become Bad. vol. 10, n.3, pp 287-295. Bocchiaro, Piero, and Filippo G. Zimbardo. “Challenging Unjust Authority: An Exploratory Study.” Current Psychology 29.2 (2010): 155-170. Print.Green, Lauren. “The Problem of Evil: Why Do “Good” People Do Bad Things?” FOX News [New York] April 11, 2007: 1-3. Print.Dreifus, Claudia. “Finding hope in knowing the universal capacity of evil.” The New York Times [San Francisco] April 3, 2007: 1-5. Print.Haney, Craig, Curtis Banks, and Philip Zimbardo. “Interpersonal dynamics in a simulated prison.” International Journal of Criminology and Penology 1 (1973): 69-97. Print.Haslam, Nick, Steve Loughnan and Gina Perry. "Meta-Milgram: An Empirical Synthesis of Obedience Experiments". PLoS UNO 9.4 (2014): 1-9. Press.