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...

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

After doing psychology for half a century, my passion for all of it is greater than ever.

The level of shyness has gone up dramatically in the last decade. I think shyness is an index of social pathology rather than a pathology of the individual.

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

I have been primarily interested in how and why ordinary people do unusual things, things that seem alien to their natures. Why do good people sometimes act evil? Why do smart people sometimes do dumb or irrational things?

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