Phillip Zimbardo

One of the first psychologists I've learned about in a previous psychology class was Philip Zimbardo. He is known for conducting the Stanford prison experiment in the 1970s where participants were assigned to either be a prison guard or a prisoner in a fake prison. The participants' behaviours were observed and it was found that the guards took their roles very seriously and would humiliate the prisoners, acting inhumane. This experiment proved that situations can have a profound impact and can lead good people to do bad things. This gave rise to the idea of the Fundamental Attribution Error which is the tendency to attribute behaviour to internal causes rather than the external situation.