Philip Zimbardo Quotes

What I've learned in my life, it's a very interesting social study for me, to go back and forth between being the guy at home and being the guy on the road and being the guy in studio and being the guy in the interview. The environment around you has so much to do with your character, and when I'm home, my character really changes quite a bit.

I think I'm a different person with different people.

We all act differently in certain places. We don't want to admit it, but we're different where we grew up than we are with our family and than we are with the guys that we went to college with or our fraternity brothers. People just exist differently. It's small, subtle things, but different colors come out. That's all there is to it.

There are different groups of people in your life that you behave slightly differently with. You behave one way with your family. You behave in a different way with your work colleagues. You behave differently with your friends from the movie club, your fitness instructor - all subtly different personas.

Just us as people, we're different around different people and in different environments.

no one in a group of three is the same person he (she, it) is in a group of two. No more than he is the same in a group of two as he is alone.

I work alone. Humans are incredible, because when you come alone, they will receive you, they accept you, they protect you, they give you all things that you need, and they teach you all things you must know. When you come with two persons or three persons, you have a group in front of them. They don't discuss with the new persons what is important to them.

We all present versions of ourselves. The person you are at work is not the same person you are at home. The face we present in our most intimate relationships is not the face we present to the world.

If I'm in a room full of intense people, I'm pretty normal. If I'm in a room full of people who aren't, maybe I'm intense.

In principle, every social situation involves strategic interaction among the participants.

The associations inside the group become more important than those outside.

I think character is very much a product of where you live, who you are, what is happening in that time of your life, and I'm interested in those pressures, those forces. A political context, a social context, really determines if not who people are then how they treat one another and what they say, how they speak.

I've always been interested in social psychology and why certain groups of people do things while others don't.

I was obsessed with learning about social behaviors. I remember explaining to my mom that kids on my soccer team were fighting because of dyads and triads.

In my solo series, I feel like I've often dealt with groups of people.

One thing that I've noticed about big families is that they usually break down into two camps: the talkers and the watchers.

Children were pack animals; let any one of them act different from the group, and the rest would bring him down.

Every small group has at least one 'difficult' person in it. If you don't immediately recognize who that person is -- it's probably you!

Every time you enter into a job it's a whole new universe. There's a new language with a new power structure. If you are in an all Black cast its a different dynamic, the same with an all male cast or a crew that is mainly women.

Have you ever noticed that idiots have a lot of friends? It's just an observation.

The idea of social performance, that we're always performing identities, is something I got fairly obsessed with. I think it's probably because I am a person who went to 15 different elementary and middle schools. I moved all the time, often having to run out in the middle of the night because my mom couldn't pay the bills. There were schools where I'd be the poor loser kid. There were schools where I'd suddenly be the smart kid or the cool kid, although that was very seldom.

I think when there's so much information to be eaten up, and so many ways to do it, people cling to groups. I think we, as monkeys, want to live in smaller groups.

Men are competent in groups that mimic the playground, incompetent in groups that mimic the family

The wit of a family is usually best received among strangers.

Coyotes hunt in packs, and so do assholes.