Kurt Lewin

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Kurt Lewin

Kurt Zadek Lewin (September 9, 1890 - February 12, 1947), was a German-born psychologist, who became one of the pioneers of contemporary social psychology. Often called the father of social psychology, and one of the first researchers to study group dynamics and organizational development, he advocated Gestalt psychology.

Biography

Kurt Zadek Lewin was born on September 9, 1890 into a Jewish family in Mogilno, Poland (then in County of ogilno, province of Posen, Germany). Kurt Lewin joined the German armed forces when World War I began. But due to a war wound, he returned to Berlin to complete his Ph.D. with Carl Stumpf (1848 - 1936) as the supervisor of his doctoral thesis. In 1914, Lewin received his doctorate in Berlin, where he studiedmathematics, physics, and psychology.

In the following years, Lewin became involved with the Gestalt group led by Wolfgang Köhler. He also became associated with the early Frankfurt School, originated by an influential group of largely Jewish Marxists at the Institute for Social Research in Germany. When Hitler came to power in Germany in 1933, the Institute members had to disband, moving to England and America. Lewin became influential in the founding of sensitivity training through the Tavistock Clinic in London.

Kurt Lewin achieved international fame and spent several years as a visiting professor at Stanford and Cornell. He emigrated to the United States in August 1933 and became a naturalized citizen in 1940. From 1935 to 1944, Lewin worked at the University of Iowa, where he made innovative studies of childhood socialization. In 1944, he went to Massachusetts Institute of Technology to lead a research center devoted to group dynamics, which continued this work after his death.

Lewin died in Newtonville, Massachusetts of a heart-attack in 1947. He was buried in his home town.

Work

Kurt Lewin’s views were a product of the active model of the mind prevelant in German philosophy. Certain parallels can be seen in between Sigmund Freud and Lewin in their formulations within the German tradition. Lewin was most directly influenced by the specific principles of the Gestalt movement and, although much of his work was done independently, he contributed heavily to applications of Gestalt principles that are prevalent to this day.

Lewin taught that the restriction of psychological descriptions to group averages or statistical summaries loses sight of the individual. According to Lewin, even if all the general laws of human behavior were known, the psychologist would still need to appreciate individual’s interactions with the environment to make any meaningful predictions.

Lewin’s model of the "interactive field" of an individual is based on his notion of "hodological space," which is defined as a geometrical system emphasizing a) movement along psychologically directed pathways, b) the dynamics of person-environment interactions, and c) the person’s behavior at environmental obstacles or barriers. The person is viewed in terms of an individual life space, containing not only the predominance of the present hodological space with psychologically directed pathways of movement, but also representations of the past experiences and future expectations.

Field theory

"Field theory," an application derived from Gestalt theory involving a view of social activities and personality dynamics, received a most articulate expression in Kurt Lewin’s work. In the Gestalt tradition, Lewin argued that personality should be viewed in the context of a dynamic field of individual-environmental interactions.

Lewin believed the "field" to be a Gestalt psychological environment existing in an individual's or in the collective group’s mind at a certain point in time that can be mathematically described in a topological constellation of constructs. This "field" is very dynamic, changing with time and experience. When fully constructed, an individual's "field" (Lewin used the term "life space") describes that person's motives, values, needs, moods, goals, anxieties, and ideals. Lewin believed that changes of an individual's "life space" depend upon that individual's internalization of external stimuli (from the physical and social world) into the "life space."

Although Lewin did not use the word "experiential," (see experiential learning) he nonetheless believed that interaction (experience) of the "life space" with "external stimuli" (at what he calls the "boundary zone") were important for development (or regression). For Lewin, development (including regression) of an individual occurs when their "life space" has a "boundary zone" experience with external stimuli. It is not merely the experience that causes change in the "life space," but the acceptance (internalization) of external stimuli.

Force field analysis

Force field analysis provides a framework for looking at the factors ("forces") that influence a situation, originally social situations. It looks at forces that are either driving movement toward a goal (helping forces) or blocking movement toward a goal (hindering forces). The principle, developed by Kurt Lewin, is a significant contribution to the fields of social science, psychology, social psychology, organizational development, process management, and change management.

Kurt Lewin used these principles to apply them to the analysis of group conflict, learning, adolescence, hatred, morale, German society, and so forth. This approach allowed him to break down common misconceptions of many social phenomena, and to determine their basic elemental constructs. He used theory, mathematics, and common sense to define a force field, and hence to determine the causes of human and group behavior.

Action Research

Kurt Lewin was the first to coin the term “action research” in his 1946 paper “Action Research and Minority Problems.” In that paper, he described action research as “a comparative research on the conditions and effects of various forms of social action and research leading to social action” that uses “a spiral of steps, each of which is composed of a circle of planning, action, and fact-finding about the result of the action.”

Action research is research that each of us can do on our own practice, that “we” (any team or family or informal community of practice) can do to improve its practice, or that larger organizations or institutions can conduct on themselves, assisted or guided by professional researchers, with the aim of improving their strategies, practices, and knowledge of the environments within which they practice.

Criticism

Lewin’s model of personality is a motivational system seeking an equilibrium of forces within the life space. From the perspective of logical positivism, Levin’s approach for developing Field Theory has been criticized for failure to meet positivist criteria for good theory.

Legacy

Kurt Lewin coined the notion of "genidentity" (1922), which has gained some importance in various theories of space-time and related fields. He also proposed Herbert Blumer's interactionist perspective of 1937 as an alternative to the "nature versus nurture" debate, in that he suggested that neither nature (inborn tendencies) nor nurture (how experiences in life shape individuals) alone can account for individuals' behavior and personalities, but rather that both nature and nurture interact to shape each person. Prominent psychologists mentored by Kurt Lewin included Leon Festinger (1919 - 1989), who became known for his cognitive dissonance theory (1956), and environmental psychologist Roger Barker.

Kurt Lewin's Field Theory reflects an interesting application of Gestalt theory on personality and social behavior. Lewin’s views fascinated many psychologists because of the complex behaviors that can be considered in the context of life space. As the behavioristic model of psychology expanded to include cognitive variables, Lewin’s teachings were readily adopted to develop a comprehensive theory of behaviorism.

Lewin's notion of "action research" can change the entire sense of social science, transforming it from reflective knowledge about past social practices formulated by a priesthood of experts (research Ph.D.s) to an active moment-to-moment theorizing, data collecting, and inquiring occurring in the midst of our ongoing lives. “Knowledge is always gained through action and for action. From this starting point, to question the validity of social knowledge is to question, not how to develop a reflective science about action, but how to develop genuinely well-informed action—how to conduct an action science” (Torbert 1991).

Action research is not only a research that describes how humans and organizations behave in the outside world but also a change mechanism that helps human and organizations reflect on and change their own systems (Reason & Bradbury, 2001). After six decades of action research development, many methodologies have been evolved, ranging:

1. from those that are more driven by the researcher’s agenda to those more driven by participants;
2. from those that are motivated primarily by instrumental goal attainment to those motivated primarily by the aim of personal, organizational, or societal transformation; and
3. from 1st-, to 2nd-, to 3rd-person research (i.e. my research on my own action, aimed primarily at personal change; our research on our group (family/team), aimed primarily at improving the group; and ‘scholarly’ research aimed primarily at theoretical generalization and/or large scale change).

There are four major theories that have developed using Lewin's action research approach:

• Chris Argyris’ "Action Science" (Argyris 1970, 1980)
• John Heron (1996) and Peter Reason’s (1995) "Cooperative Inquiry"
• Paulo Freire’s (1970) "Participatory Action Research"
• William Torbert’s (2004) "Developmental Action Inquiry"

Since action research is as much about creating a better life within more effective and just social contexts as it is about discovering true facts and theories, it should not be surprising that it has flourished in Latin America, Northern Europe, India, and Australia as much or more than within university scholarship in the U.S.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Argyris, C. 1970. Intervention Theory and Method. Reading MA: Addison-Wesley.
• Argyris, C. 1980. Inner Contradictions of Rigorous Research. San Diego CA: Academic Press.
• Ben-David, J.and Collins, R. (1966). "Social factors in the origin of a new science: The case of psychology." American Psychological Review, 31, 451-465.
• Blumental, A.L. (1970). Language and Psychology: Historical aspects of psychlinguistics. New York: John Wiley.
• Boring, E.G.(1950). A history of experimental psychology, 2nd ed. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
• Brennan, J.F.(1982). History and systems of psychology. Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, Inc.
• Cartwright, D. (1951). Forward to the 1951 Edition. Field Theory in Social Science and Selected Theoretical Papers-Kurt Lewin. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 1997. Originally published by Harper & Row.
• Freire, P. 1970. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Herder & Herder.
• Heron, J. 1996. Cooperative Inquiry: Research into the human condition. London: Sage.
• Leahey, Th. H. (1991). A History of Modern Psychology. Englewood Cliff, New Jersey: Prentice Hall.
• Lewin, K. (1951) Field theory in social science. (D. Cartwright, Ed.) New York: Harper & Row.
• Lewin K. (1943). Defining the "Field at a Given Time." Psychological Review. 50: 292-310. Republished in Resolving Social Conflicts & Field Theory in Social Science, Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 1997.
• Lewin, K., Lippitt, R., & White, R. "Patterns of aggressive behavior in experimentally created social climates." Journal of Social Psychology, 1939, 10, 271-299.
• Lewin, K. (1936) Principles of Topological Psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill.
• Lewin, K. 1946. "Action Research and Minority Problems,” Journal of Social Issues, No.3.
• Marrow, Alfred J. The Practical Theorist: The Life and Work of Kurt Lewin (1969, 1984) ISBN 0-934698-22-8 (Marrow studied as one of Lewin's students)
• Morrow, Alfred J. Kurt Lewin. New York: Basic Books.
• Reason, P. 1995. Participation in Human Inquiry. London: Sage.
• Reason & Bradbury. Handbook of Action Research. London: Sage, 2001.
• Torbert, W. 1991. The Power of Balance: Transforming Self, Society, and Scientific Inquiry.
• Torbert, W. & Associates. 2004. Action Inquiry: The Secret of Timely and Transforming Leadership.
• White, Ralph K., and Ronald O. Lippitt, Autocracy and Democracy (1960, 1972) ISBN 0-8371-5710-2 (White and Lippitt carried out the research described here under Lewin as their thesis-advisor; Marrow's book also briefly describes the same work in chapter 12.)

External Links

• CARN Collaborative Action Research Network
• Action Research Resources from the Southern Cross University
• Action Research by Martin Ryder at the University of Colorado at Denver (School of Education)
• Teacher action research from Edchange.
• PARnet.org One of the oldest websites dedicated to the action research community sponsored by the Cornell Participatory Action Research Network. Includes the PARchives, a field repository and bibliographic database.
• International Conference on "Kurt Lewin: Contribution to Contemporary Psychology"
• Kurt Lewin at World of Biography
• Kurt Lewin: groups, experiential learning and action research
• Kurt Lewin (biography and overview of theory)
• Force Field Analysis by Issa Bass
• Force Field Analysis - Understanding The Pressures For and Against Change
• Website of Center for Dharmic Leadership. One can find (free) articles, research papers and training modules on the theme of Serving and Leading from a spiritual context.

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