Is it possible to learn how to become heroes? This is the challenge of Philip Zimbardo, one of the most important social psychologists in the world. Much of his career was dedicated to the so-called "psychology of evil". The 1971 Stanford prison experiment led Zimbardo to sustain that the transformation that leads an individual to commit violent and reprehensible actions is the result of what he calls the Lucifer Effect, the result of the interaction between dispositional, situational and systemic factors. However, this awareness led him to the search for an antidote: this is how the Heroic Imagination Project was born, a training to educate on heroism and a greater awareness of one’s own and others’ humanity and integrity.
Keywords: Resilience, heroism, education, heroic imagination project, Lucifer effect.