Philip George Zimbardo (born March 23, 1933) is an American psychologist and a professor emeritus at Stanford University. He is known for his Stanford prison study and his authorship of introductory psychology textbooks for college students. Zimbardo was born in New York City on March 23, 1933.
He completed his BA with a triple major in psychology, sociology, and anthropology from Brooklyn College in 1954, where he graduated summa cum laude. He completed his M.S. (1955) and Ph.D (1959) in psychology from Yale University. He taught at Yale from 1959 to 1960.
From 1960 to 1967, he was a professor of psychology at New York University. From 1967 to 1968, he taught at Columbia University. He joined the faculty at Stanford University in 1968.
In the year 1971, Zimbardo accepted a tenured position as professor of psychology at Stanford University. There he conducted the Stanford prison study, in which 24 normal college students were randomly assigned to be "prisoners" or "guards" in a mock prison located in the basement of the psychology building at Stanford (three additional college students were selected as alternates, but did not participate in the study).