The Stanford prison experiment came out of class exercises in which I encouraged students to understand the dynamics of prison life.

I've always been curious about the psychology of the person behind the mask.

Careers in virtually all academic disciplines are fostered by being a superstar who knows more about one subject than anyone else in the world.

At North Hollywood High School, I was shunned by everyone. I would sit down in the cafeteria, and students would get up from the table and walk away. They thought I was from the Mafia...

What troubles me is the Internet and the electronic technology revolution. Shyness is fueled in part by so many people spending huge amounts of time alone, isolated on e-mail, in chat rooms, which reduces their face-to-face contact with other people.

We want to believe in the essential, unchanging goodness of people, in their power to resist external pressures, in their rational appraisal and then rejection of situational temptations. We invest human nature with God-like qualities, with moral and rational faculties that make us both just and wise. We simplify the complexity of human experience by erecting a seemingly impermeable boundary between Good and Evil.

Ideas for my first experiments in human aggression came from discussions we had in a research seminar about William Golding's 'Lord of the Flies.'