By Norhan Tawil, Abdelhamid Mahmoud and Tamer Hegab
CAIRO- Internationally recognized scholar, psychologist and author, Philip Zimbardo, gave a lecture at the American University in Cairo (AUC) on Monday, March 9.
Zimbardo, 81, is a professor emeritus at Stanford University. He became known for the Stanford prison experiment, and since then, became an author of many books including The Lucifer Effect and The Time Paradox, which he discussed in his lecture under the title, “The Secret Power of Time to Influence our Decisions and Impact National Destinies."
The study of time perspective investigates how the human experience is dispersed over different categories and time frames of the past, present, and future. According to Zimbardo, “Your time perspective is the most important thing about you.” He explained how one’s time perspective is even more important than their personality and the way in which it shapes their behavior.
Zimbardo believes that time perspective is easy for anyone to understand. He made that clear by saying that “People from any education can understand time perspective.” Mariam El Sawy, a student of the SAPE Department at AUC believes that, “Understanding time perspective and psychology, makes you understand life, yourself and the people around you in a better way.”
An individual’s time perspective is so important it “can influence therapy,” according to Zimbardo. Dina Hassan, psychologist, and AUC alumni said, “I have a lot of patients with PTSD, and I think I should apply methods of time perspective to my therapy.”
The psychology unit at AUC, nominated Dr. Zimbardo as a Distinguished Visiting Professor for the SAPE Department. He communicated his work to his audience via intriguing and active presentation slides, that were full of bright images and funny videos. The 225-seat Mansour Lecture Hall at AUC was overpacked with excited students, faculty and attendees.
This is the second lecture for Zimbardo at AUC . He gave a lecture on Sunday, March 8, at the Tahrir campus under the title "My Journey from Creating Evil to Inspiring Heroism." According to Hassan, Zimbardo has the ability to “take something that could otherwise be very bland and make it interesting.”