Philip Zimbardo, Renowned Psychologist,
   To Receive SPSSI’s Kurt Lewin Award

Philip Zimbardo, a Stanford social psychologist whose 1971 “prison” experiment demonstrated the profound and potentially corrupting effect power could have on both prisoner and guard, is to receive the 2015 Kurt Lewin Award from the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues (SPSSI).

Named for the late Kurt Lewin, a pioneer in the science of group dynamics and a founder of the SPSSI, the Lewin Award is presented annually for "outstanding contributions to the development and integration of psychological research and social action."

Zimbardo will present a distinguished address at the culmination of SPSSI’s 2015 Conference, which is taking place June 20-21, 2015, in Washington, DC.

Zimbardo’s famous experiment has shaped generations of thinking about the role of status and power in shaping intergroup relations, and is discussed in virtually every introductory textbook on social psychology. It demonstrated how easily ordinary college students could cross the line between good and evil when caught up in systemic forces and given untrammeled power over others.

Zimbardo has served as president of the American Psychological Association, designed and narrated an award-winning PBS series, Discovering Psychology, and published more than 50 books and 400 professional and popular articles and chapters, among them, Shyness, The Lucifer Effect, and The Time Paradox.

His current work, titled The Heroic Imagination, investigates what pushes some people to become perpetrators of evil, while others act heroically on behalf of those in need.

The Lewin Award has been given annually since 1948, and counts among its recipients many of the most significant social thinkers of recent times including Gordon Allport, Margaret Mead, Kenneth Clark, and Claude Steele. For more about the Lewin Award, see here: http://bit.ly/1I4sfnL.

Want to learn more about SPSSI's 2015 Summer Conference? Visit our Conference page here: