the Generalist’s Corner - George Slavich · THE GENERALIST’S CORNER On 50 Years of Giving Psychology Away: An Interview With Philip Zimbardo George M. Slavich University of California,

Teaching of Psychology, 36: 278–284, 2009Copyright C© Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 0098-6283 print / 1532-8023 onlineDOI: 10.1080/00986280903175772

THE GENERALIST’S CORNER

On 50 Years of Giving Psychology Away:An Interview With Philip Zimbardo

George M. SlavichUniversity of California, San Francisco

Philip G. Zimbardo, emeritus professor of psychology atStanford University, is internationally recognized as thevoice and face of contemporary American psychology. Heearned his PhD in social psychology from Yale Universityin 1959 and has since received seven honorary doctoratesfor his contributions to psychology and society. The authorof more than 300 publications and 50 books, Zimbardo’sresearch spans 20 topics, including shyness, evil, teach-ing, persuasion, hypnosis, dissonance, time perspective,and heroism. He is best known for his landmark study,the Stanford Prison Experiment; his widely seen TV se-ries, Discovering Psychology; and his best-selling textbook,Psychology and Life. He is past president of the West-ern Psychological Association (WPA) and the AmericanPsychological Association (APA), and has received dis-tinguished teaching awards from WPA, APA, StanfordUniversity, Phi Beta Kappa, and the Society for the Teach-ing of Psychology. His aim to “give psychology away” isevident in all he does.

George M. Slavich is a Beck Institute Scholar, Societyin Science: Branco Weiss Fellow, and National Instituteof Mental Health Postdoctoral Fellow in Psychology andMedicine at the University of California, San Francisco.He completed undergraduate and graduate coursework atStanford University, received his PhD in clinical psychol-ogy from the University of Oregon, and completed clini-cal training at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School.His research investigates the characteristics, causes, andconsequences of life stress in major depression. He is alsodeeply devoted to teaching and mentoring. He founded theStanford Undergraduate Psychology Conference and WPAStudent Council; he also cofounded the Society of Clini-

cal Psychology’s Section on Graduate Student and EarlyCareer Psychologists. For these contributions and others,he received the 2004 Albert Bandura Graduate ResearchAward, the 2005 Edwin B. Newman Graduate ResearchAward, and the 2005 Wilbert J. McKeachie Teaching Ex-cellence Award.

Slavich: Thanks for meeting with me, Phil, and con-gratulations on your recent 50th teaching anniversary!Tell me how it all began.

Zimbardo: I guess you could say I was an intuitivepsychologist and “situationist” from the beginning. Iwas born at home, hands first, in New York City’sSouth Bronx ghetto during the Great Depression, andwe moved 31 times while I was a child. Being poorback then was not as bad because everyone aroundyou was also poor. And without TV, we really didn’tknow how rich folks lived. Poverty nevertheless tookquite a toll on my body. I was a skinny bag of bonesfor most of my childhood and at age 6 was hospi-talized for 6 months with double pneumonia (bothlungs) and whooping cough. Those were the days be-fore penicillin!

The South Bronx provided my first informal edu-cation in psychology. To survive, you had to be streetsmart: You had to know who to trust, how to makefriends, and how to make money. To help make endsmeet, I sold magazines door-to-door, delivered laun-dry in Harlem, and worked as a shoeshine boy in frontof a bank on Southern Boulevard. The pay was notgreat (only 5 cents for a shine!), but by age 10, I had athriving business.

278 Teaching of Psychology

Slavich

School was my ticket out of the ghetto. It wasclean, predictable, and structured, and the social skillsI learned dealing with nurses in the hospital gaveme the ability to ingratiate myself with teachers, whoin turn provided me with a great education. Perhapsmost important, the situational change from the streetsto school completely refocused my time perspectiveaway from the hedonistic present that my friends andfamily exhibited and toward learning how to delaygratification, set goals, and plan for the future. I can’toverestimate the extent to which those teachers andthat environment influenced my life trajectory.

Slavich: You were high school classmates withrenowned social psychologist Stanley Milgram. Seri-ously, what are the chances?

Zimbardo: Pretty slim, I’d say! Milgram and I wereclassmates during our senior year at James Monroe HighSchool in the Bronx. That was 1950. Monroe was amidlevel school. I had gotten into Stuyvesant High,an elite school, but when I got there, I realized therewere no girls. So, I quit after my first term.

What’s interesting is that my family moved to Hol-lywood after my first year at Monroe, and during thatentire year, I was shunned, completely. It was inexpli-cable. Literally, I would sit down in class, and other stu-dents would not sit near me. It wasn’t until springtimethat I found out why. I was going to a game with thebaseball team and had expressed my concern to a team-

Zimbardo

mate sitting next to me on the bus. “Of course we’reafraid of you,” he said. “You’re from New York, andyou’re Italian! Everyone thinks you’re in the mafia!”

I was a harmless kid: 6 feet tall, 150 pounds, re-ally skinny, and very polite. Nevertheless, I developedasthma that year as a consequence of the lonelinessand rejection, and that was the excuse my family usedto return to New York. So, we went back to New York,and I started my senior year at Monroe. In 6 months,I was voted most popular boy in the senior class. Theaccolade was that I was “Jimmy Monroe.” I talked withMilgram about my spike in popularity when I got backto Monroe, and together we wondered—in primitiveterms—whether it was me or the situation that hadchanged. We agreed it was probably the situation.

Interestingly, Milgram was concerned about theHolocaust even back then. Some people had heardabout it, but it wasn’t taken seriously. His work onblind obedience to authority really derived from hisconcern about whether the same thing could happenhere. Everyone said, “No way! That was Nazi Germany,and this is America.” But he wasn’t satisfied with thatanswer. He said, “How do you know until you’re in thatsituation?” He was really the first person to say that it’snot enough to think or say that you won’t do some-thing. Indeed, it’s not even enough to imagine you’rein a situation, because it’s something about being inpowerful social settings that is transformative.

Vol. 36, No. 4, 2009 279

I met Milgram again 10 years later, when he wascoming to Yale and I was leaving for New York Uni-versity (NYU). Ed Zigler, a new faculty member at thetime, was hosting a party and said, “Hey Zim, here’syour old friend, Stanley!” The most curious thing thatMilgram said to me was, “You were Jimmy Monroe,and I should have been.” I thought it was a joke, butI was never quite sure because he was clearly not apopular kid—mostly because he was super smart, andsmart kids are never really liked that much. As it turnsout, he always wanted to be popular, and I alwayswanted to be smart. We both had to settle for less!

Slavich: To support yourself in college, you checkedcoats and sold concessions at Broadway’s historic St.James Theater, which premiered shows like Oklahoma,The King and I, Where’s Charley?, and Hello, Dolly.Did this exposure to show business influence your earlythoughts about teaching?

Zimbardo: You bet. I actually started working at theSt. James Theater during my senior year in high school.The schedule was brutal: five nights a week and all daySaturday for $3 a performance. The experience taughtme two things that are important for teaching. First, ittaught me discipline. When I was going to BrooklynCollege, the commute was 1.5 hours each way (fromhome to school), so I had to be able to study on thesubway, in short periods of time, with people leaningall over me. Then, every night I would go to work. I’dhave 30 minutes of setup, a 45-minute break duringwhich I’d study again, 15 minutes of selling orangeadeand programs, and another 45 minutes of studying. Ifyou want to be a great teacher, you have to be ableto prepare great lectures with whatever free time youhave. This experience taught me that all free time isvaluable prep time.

Perhaps more important, working at the theatertaught me about the virtues of performing really well.We saw parts of the shows all the time; we memorizedthe songs and many of the lines. I still remember see-ing actors like Ray Bolger in Where’s Charley? capturethe audience with command performances. Watchingthose actors on a daily basis showed me how joyousperforming can be, but it also taught me that if you’regoing to do something, then you should do it well. Thatmeans practicing your lines and preparing yourself sothat each time you set foot on “stage,” you give yourbest performance. That’s what I try to do when I teach.I think of it as “entertaining while educating.”

Slavich: After graduating from Brooklyn College,you attended Yale University for graduate school, andwhile at Yale, you became the first graduate student

to teach introductory psychology there. Tell me aboutthe experience.

Zimbardo: The previous year I had taken a courseon teaching from Claude Buxton, the department chairat Yale. At the end of the year, I asked him, “Whendo we teach?” He said, “You don’t! We don’t allowgraduate students to teach the Yale Man. They do thatat Harvard and call them proctors, but we don’t dothat.” I was really downhearted.

That spring, though, one of my professors, IrvinChild, asked if I’d give a lecture on group conflict in hisclass. I was so excited that I prepared a whole coursefor that one lecture. Then in the fall, Yale redesignedthe introductory psychology course from a few largelectures to 15 small sections, to be taught by the assis-tant professors. One of the professors left Yale at thelast minute, though, and because I was the only otherperson with any teaching experience, I jumped in toteach. I still remember that class. I immediately gotstudents involved in doing research, and they loved it.It was so interesting because these kids’ parents ran theworld. For example, to conduct a research project, astudent would just get his father to distribute the ques-tionnaires to the entire plant; and sure enough, in 1week, he would have 1,000 completed surveys!

The other interesting thing was the difference be-tween the prep school and public school kids. At thattime (in 1957), about 50% of the students at Yale camefrom prep schools, and the other half came from publicschools. The difference was dramatic: The prep schoolkids wore button-down shirts with collars and tweedjackets; they knew how to ask and answer questions,and their essays were great. Basically, they dressedand acted like their professors. The public school kidswere the opposite. Interestingly, though, the differ-ences between these two groups disappeared after thefirst semester. It told me that the prep school kids justhad better teaching up until that point, but that withenough exposure to a rich intellectual environment,all students can thrive. That’s basically what happenedto me. Again, it’s all about the power of the situation.

Slavich: Your first academic job at NYU had youteaching 13 courses per year. How did you make thatwork and at the same time remain passionate aboutteaching?

Zimbardo: I was the only assistant professor at NYUwhen I began there in 1960. My salary was $6,000, andwhen I arrived, they just said, “Here’s your teachingprogram!” It included 5 lecture courses per semester,for a total of 10 courses per year; for another $1,000, Ialso taught 2 summer courses. Then, for 2 of those years,

280 Teaching of Psychology

I went back to Yale during the summer and taught yetanother course on learning. It was insane!

The thing I learned immediately was that I had to usemy time and effort efficiently. So, I identified the beststudents in introductory psychology, sent them a lettertelling them how wonderful they were, and encouragedthem to take social psychology the next term; if theywere good, I encouraged them to take attitude changeand then group dynamics. Some students, therefore,majored in me: They took five of my lecture coursesand topped it off with research credit. This was theonly way I was going to make it, though. Trainingstudents in research was a form of teaching in itself,but, more important, it enabled me to develop the skillsof individuals who could in turn increase my researchproductivity. The research we did generated contentfor my lectures, and my lectures generated ideas for myresearch. The process was totally synergistic.

Slavich: One day, out of the blue, while you were anassistant professor at NYU, Al Hastorf, the departmentchair at Stanford University, called to offer you a job.Describe what happened.

Zimbardo: I had a great research group at NYU. Atthat time, though, NYU wasn’t the place to be: Thefaculty were not stimulating and students didn’t wantto be there. Also, after 6 years, I was still an assis-tant professor, without tenure. I asked the departmentchairman for an early promotion, but he said, “Peoplethink you’re too brash; you need time to mellow. Andyou also need to make a quantum leap in visibility.” Isaid, “I don’t know what that means, but I’ll do it!”

Then one day I got a call from Al. He said, “Hi,I’m Al Hastorf, chair of the Psychology Department atStanford. The senior faculty have met, and togetherwe invite you to join us as a full professor with tenure.”I thought it was a joke, that someone was putting meon. He asked, “What will it take you to come here?” Isaid, “Sunglasses and a one-way ticket!” Guessing thatthis was the “quantum leap in visibility” my chair waslooking for, I immediately took the job.

Slavich: Your interest in activism harkens back toyour days at NYU when Anne Zeidberg, your secretaryat the time, compelled you to get involved with socialand political causes. What do you see as the relationbetween activism and teaching?

Zimbardo: That’s a great question. I’ve always beena reluctant activist because activism takes time, andtime is something I’ve never had enough of. As psy-chologists, though, people are our world: We studytheir attitudes and values, what they do, and what theythink. Teaching and activism are even more closelyrelated in my case because I study things like situa-

tional influences, persuasion, political behavior, andterrorism.

Anne Zeidberg was one of the first women to join theNational Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, and shedid, in fact, compel me to become more involved. Atone point, we picketed the Time-Life building becausethey had written an article arguing that fallout shelterswere the way to deal with nuclear threat. The notionwas that if you were rich enough, then you could justbuild a shelter and not worry about the threat. Thatargument was crazy, though, because (a) no NewYorker had enough space or money to build a fall-out shelter, and (b) there was no evidence that falloutshelters work! At the same time, I knew that kind oflogic was encouraging the cold war mentality of “wecan nuke you before you nuke us.” So, I really did feelcompelled to speak out. I still remember people yelling,“Go get a job, commie!” We were all well-dressed pro-fessors from NYU.

Slavich: Your APA presidency was marked bySeptember 11, 2001, and the political perspective thatfollowed was characterized by a dispositional stanceon “good and evil.” In instances like this, when one’sknowledge or research relate to a major social or politi-cal issue, what responsibilities and privileges do teach-ers have?

Zimbardo: As a citizen, you are responsible for beingconcerned about your country: about what it’s doingright and what it’s doing wrong. In this context, teach-ers typically have a significant amount of credibility.For starters, then, it’s your responsibility to make clearwhat’s opinion and what’s fact. That has always beena fine line for me because my research is closely relatedto the social issues I care passionately about. To ad-dress that, I always try to say things like, “And now,a word from our sponsors!” or “Psychology does nottake responsibility for what I’m about to say!” I’ve alsohandled the issue by hosting an open mic session 10minutes before each class. That way, any student cansay what he or she thinks about any current issue orstatement I made in class. The approach is a good onebecause it promotes free speech while sharing some ofthe power in the classroom.

Slavich: Against this backdrop of weapons of massdestruction, you created several tools for mass instruc-tion. These include a widely seen educational TV series,Discovering Psychology, and the oldest current textbookin psychology, Psychology and Life. What do these ini-tiatives say about you or your view of teaching?

Zimbardo: These initiatives say that if you’re goingto teach, then your outreach should be limitless. Theproblem with teaching in a classroom is that there are

Vol. 36, No. 4, 2009 281

walls. I taught 1,000 students at a time at Stanford. Asbig as those classes were, though, my impact was stilllimited to students who could afford to go to Stanford.Being a poor kid from the Bronx, I always found myselfasking, “What about all of the people who can’t affordto go to a private school—a privileged school?” So,when I was asked to write Psychology and Life and createDiscovering Psychology, I jumped at the opportunity.

Slavich: In addition, you have authored more than300 articles and 50 books. Your most recent books, TheLucifer Effect (Zimbardo, 2007) and The Time Paradox(Zimbardo & Boyd, 2008), summarize your work onsituational determinants of behavior and time perspec-tive, respectively. But you have studied 20 differenttopics in all. Are you particularly proud of any of theselines of research?

Zimbardo: The thing I’m most well known for isthe Stanford Prison Experiment. That experiment andMilgram’s experiments on blind obedience to author-ity are really bookends that elucidate the power of thesituation. For example, whereas Milgram’s research wasall about the power of individual authority over an in-dividual person, the Stanford Prison Experiment wasall about the ability for a system to repeatedly createsituations that strongly influence behavior. In a para-doxical way, though, the thing I’m proud of is whatstarted the year after that study—namely, the line ofthinking that led to my research on shyness.

Because I believe deeply in the synergy betweenteaching and research, after the Stanford Prison closedits doors, I took slides and photos from the project andturned them into classroom lectures for introductoryand social psychology. And when I give this lecturein class, I always ask students, “Why should you careabout this study? Most of you will never be guards orprisoners!” The answer, of course, is that in some ways,everyone will be a prisoner or a guard at some point intheir life, because a guard is simply someone who limitsthe freedom of another person. Parents, spouses, andbosses do this all the time. And the recipients of thisbehavior? Well, they are the prisoners.

What’s most interesting is that if you think about it,shy people have internalized the role of both prisonerand guard. On the one hand, they set strict limits ontheir freedoms of association and speech; on the otherhand, these limits are entirely self-imposed. Shynessis very unique in this sense because, in essence, it isa system of thoughts and beliefs that are entirely self-generated and that have the effect of creating a self-imposed psychological prison. The internalized guardsays, “Don’t ask that girl to dance, don’t ask your bossfor a raise, and don’t raise your hand because you’re

going to look foolish!” Meanwhile, the prisoner selfsays, “But I think I like her, I think I deserve a raise,and I think I know the answer.” The wishes of theprisoner are strong, but the guard usually wins out.

To make a long story short, one day after I gavethis lecture in 1972, a student came up to me and said,“What else can you tell me about shyness? I’ve been shyall my life and I really want to know why.” I told himI didn’t know anything about shyness, but that I’d behappy to mentor him on an independent study project.He came back the next day and said, “There’s basicallyno research on shyness. I found only one study, andit was done at Stanford Medical School. The authorsconcluded that shyness is a reaction formation againstwanting to be a voyeur.” His interest prompted us tocreate a seminar on shyness. Twelve students showedup for the first meeting, and that was the beginning ofmy shyness research group at Stanford. We conducteda variety of studies on shyness and were shocked by theinitial results: Ninety percent of Stanford students hada lifetime history of shyness!

Fast-forward to 1977. A publisher called and askedme to write a book on shyness, to which I responded,“No, we don’t have enough research. We’re collectingit, but we’re not ready to write a book.” He said, “That’stoo bad because someone is writing a book on yourwork, and there won’t be a market for two books.”Then he said, “I’ll tell you what, though. I’ll send youmy best editor to see how much you can finish in aweek.” The next thing I knew, I was checking into ahotel with the editor. In 1 day, we laid out the entirebook on the walls of the hotel room. I wrote a chaptera day for 7 days, and by Sunday, the book was done. Itwas a huge bestseller. Its popularity made us realize thatwe needed to create a shyness treatment and researchclinic for the public, so that’s what we did. As it turnsout, the entire story was just a setup, a big lie: Therewas no “other book!”

In any case, that’s my ideal teaching model in anutshell. First, I did an experiment (the Prison Study)and worked it into a lecture, which led to an idea aboutthe prison-shyness metaphor. A student then wantedto learn more about the topic, so I told him to findrelevant research. He found none, so we conducted afew studies. Based on those studies, I created a courseon shyness; on the basis of that course, we did moreresearch. We wrote articles on shyness, which led towriting a book. The book led to the shyness clinic, andthe clinic has been serving the public for the past 30years.

Slavich: As someone mentored by a handful ofmaster teachers, what do you believe early career

282 Teaching of Psychology

instructors should aim to learn from more experiencedteachers?

Zimbardo: Early career instructors should rememberthat each mentor has something unique to give. Interms of research, for example, some advisors are reallygood at framing a question, whereas others are reallygood at selecting the best methods to test a question.The same principle applies to teaching. Young teach-ers, therefore, should aim to have as many teachingmodels as possible.

At the same time, nobody should teach withoutsitting in on other classes. Some teachers say, “Well,I did that as a student.” But that’s wrong; observing aclass prompts a very different attentional orientation,and the goal of this exercise is not to get as muchinformation as possible from the lecture, but rather toanalyze the teaching process. Sit in on the classes ofgreat teachers, but also observe teachers who you’veheard are not so good. For the good teachers, focus onwhat they are doing right; for the others, focus on whatthey’re doing wrong and on how they can improve.And for both types, always ask, “Is that the best waythey could have introduced or explained that point?”

There is a sense in psychology—which is really for-eign to our whole field—that good teachers are born.That perspective is wrong, I think: Good teachers arenot born; they are made by hard work, by understand-ing teacher–student dynamics, by learning from mod-els, and by practicing. Not every opening gambit orclassroom demonstration works, and you have to bewilling to analyze why and then change your approachbased on your analysis. Ask, “Was it me? Was it thedemonstration? Or was it the situation?” If teaching iswhat you’re going to do in life, then your goal shouldbe to work to perfect it. And teaching is an endlesslyperfectable skill.

Slavich: And conversely, what can experienced in-structors learn from their students?

Zimbardo: Each decade of students seem to be verydifferent from the last in terms of their attitudes, values,beliefs, and skills. This is due in part, I think, to theprofound influence that technological advancementshave had on students’ brains. Students nowadays arecapable of processing multiple sources of informationvery quickly and in parallel, and this means that tradi-tionally formatted lectures run the risk of being boring.Experienced teachers can take cues from students andchange their lectures to include more relevant exam-ples. Teachers need to do more than that, though. Themost important issue is not how to revise the content ofa lecture to make it better, but rather how to enhancethe process by which one teaches to make it more en-

gaging. Put another way, the question is this: How canI improve my approach to teaching so that it is moreconsistent with the basic nature of these new studentminds? This question is relevant for new teachers, butit’s even more important for more senior teachers, likeme, who learned the trade when reading a lecture orgiving a low-tech presentation was normal.

My solution for adapting has been to adopt atransformational approach to classroom instruction. Inthis approach, teachers are thought of as intellectualcoaches who create teams of students who collaboratewith each other and with their teacher to master bod-ies of information. Teachers facilitate students’ acquisi-tion of key course concepts, but they do so with a focuson promoting students’ personal development and in-creasing their engagement with the course material.This approach includes doing things like establishing aclear vision for the course. At the heart of the method,however, is the creation of experiential lessons thatare congruent with the key course concepts and thatextend student learning beyond the bounds of the class-room (see Slavich & Zimbardo, 2009). Students willshow and tell you what they are capable of learning, butyou have to listen and watch closely. Listening in thisway made me realize that transformational teaching isthe only way to go, because it puts students in chargeof critical aspects of the learning process.

Slavich: Looking forward, it seems as though recenttechnological advancements, such as functional mag-netic resonance imaging (fMRI) and genetic mapping,are reshaping psychology. Are we embarking on a newera of psychological science and, if so, what is the rel-evance of this change for teachers?

Zimbardo: In psychology, there has always been astrong desire to be biological or physical. Early on, wewanted to be like physics, but the urge is just as strongnow as some researchers work to incorporate technolo-gies like fMRI into everything they do. They aim tomake psychology more like a “real science,” but I’m notconvinced that getting people’s brains to light up in ascanner is any more scientific than conducting inter-views that uncover important phenomena. It’s excitingthat the boundaries of psychology are expanding to in-clude multiple systems and levels of analysis, and wehave seen the benefits of this increased integration infields like health psychology and social cognitive neu-roscience. At the same time, it’s important not to getso fascinated by technology that you abandon theoryor reduce explanations for complex social phenomenato the activation of particular voxels in the brain.

This changing landscape has clear relevance forteachers. My message for early career instructors is that

Vol. 36, No. 4, 2009 283

your best chance for getting and keeping a new jobinvolves being able to teach courses like introductorypsychology, as difficult as that is. I know that manyjobs are reserved for specialists. Therefore, you reallydo need to know everything there is to know aboutyour dissertation area. At the same time, you also haveto be trained widely enough that you can teach intro-ductory courses. Every department needs faculty whoare really good at teaching introductory psychology.Thus, the take-away message is that you have to be aspecialist—because no one is hiring generalists thesedays—but that it’s not enough to be just a specialist.

Slavich: We’ve covered a lot of ground. Is thereanything else to know about you or your views onteaching or psychology?

Zimbardo: Yes, two things. First, I’ve found thatyou can learn a lot from extending yourself in newways. Even though I’ve taught for 50 years, I am nowteaching in two other venues where I’m learning newthings. One opportunity involves teaching social psy-chology to clinical psychology students; the other in-volves teaching a course on the psychology of terror-ism at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey,California, which offers advanced degrees to fire chiefs,CIA officials, and other first responders. What’s excit-ing is that these opportunities have required me tothink about my material and presentation style in en-tirely new ways. It keeps me young to have new kindsof teaching audiences rather than simply to rework myold stuff for the new generation of undergraduates.

The final message concerns the potential benefitsof great teaching and the deleterious consequences ofbad teaching. The only C I ever got was in introductorypsychology. I was Phi Beta Kappa and graduated summacum laude from Brooklyn College. And then, there wasthe C. So, was it me, or was it the situation?

When I think back on that course, everything aboutit was bad: The lectures were disconnected, the examswere confusing, the textbook was terrible, and the text-book supplement, which was titled Great Experiments inPsychology, included no great experiments. I switched

my major to sociology and anthropology because ofthat experience, and I came back to psychology in mysenior year only because my buddy, Jerry Platt, neededa lab partner for experimental psychology. As it turnsout, I fell in love with experimental psychology fromthat moment on; Jerry, on the other hand, hated it andimmediately switched to sociology. The point, though,is that good teaching can have a very profound im-pact on students’ life course. And what a wonderfulprivilege that is to have!

Slavich: Thanks again for your time, Phil.Zimbardo: My pleasure, George!

References

Slavich, G. M., & Zimbardo, P. G. (2009). Transformationalteaching in psychology: Basic principles, theoretical underpin-nings, and core methods. Manuscript submitted for publica-tion.

Zimbardo, P. G. (2007). The Lucifer effect: Understanding howgood people turn evil. New York: Random House.

Zimbardo, P. G., & Boyd, J. (2008). The time paradox: Thenew psychology of time that will change your life. New York:The Free Press.

Notes

1. Preparation of this article was supported by a So-ciety in Science: Branco Weiss Fellowship, an In-structional Resource Award from the Society for theTeaching of Psychology, and Ruth L. KirschsteinNational Research Service Award MH019391–17to George M. Slavich.

2. Send correspondence to George M. Slavich, Ph.D.,Department of Psychiatry, University of California,San Francisco, 3333 California Street, Suite 465,San Francisco, CA 94143–0848; e-mail: [email protected]

284 Teaching of Psychology