Zimbardo Redux

One last note about last night's Scripps College speaker Phillip Zimbardo. We came across an article posted on the Association for Psychological Science (APS) website from August, 2006. Zimbardo argues that people, even the good people of Claremont, behave far less heroically or good than we would like to think, under certain conditions.

Zimbardo is quoted at the end of the article:

Zimbardo’s address exemplified how social psychology — even the most depressing studies of human weakness — can actually be inspiring. “There will come a time in your life,” he said, “when … you have the power within you, as an ordinary person, as a person who is willing to take a decision, to blow the whistle, to take action, to go the other direction and do the heroic thing.” That decision is set against the decisions to perpetrate evil or to do nothing, which is the evil of inaction. Zimbardo concluded with a thought from Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, the Russian poet imprisoned under Stalin: “The line between good and evil lies at the center of every human heart.” He added, “it is not an abstraction out there. It’s a decision you have to make every day in here.” With the last of Zimbardo’s 150 slides and three video clips, came an extended standing ovation — rare among psychology audiences.

How will you act when your time comes to take a stand, to go against the grain, to be a contrarian? How have you acted before?