Kurt Lewin
Kurt Lewin was a significant figure in psychology, born in Prussia to a middle-class Jewish family and later moving to Berlin. He earned his doctorate from the University of Berlin in 1914, influenced by Gestalt psychology, which emphasizes understanding wholes rather than merely summing their parts. His experiences in World War I, including injury and recovery, inspired his early work on field theory, which posits that behavior is shaped by the totality of interdependent factors present at any given moment. Lewin championed social action and inclusivity in research, notably involving women at a time when many did not. His influential presentations in the United States, particularly at Yale in 1929, helped solidify his ideas in the psychological community. Throughout his career, he focused on issues of social change, minority relations, and group dynamics, founding the Research Center for Group Dynamics at MIT. Lewin's contributions, including the development of action research and the T-group methodology, have had a lasting impact on social psychology and organizational practices. He passed away in 1947, leaving behind a legacy that continues to inform contemporary psychological thought.
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Subject Terms
Kurt Lewin
Psychologist
- Born: September 9, 1890
- Birthplace: Mogilno, Prussia (now in Poland)
- Died: February 12, 1947
- Place of death: Newtonville, Massachusetts
Identity: Jewish refugee to America from Nazi Germany, social psychologist
Type of psychology: Social psychology
Fields of study: Group processes; methodological issues; interpersonal relations
Lewin originated the concept of field theory to explain how human behavior interacts with the environment in which the behavior occurs. He utilized action research, a form of research that integrates the pursuit of knowledge with action on social issues.
Life
Kurt Lewin was born in Prussia to a middle-class Jewish family. The family moved to Berlin, Germany, when Lewin was fifteen years old. He studied the theory of science at the University of Berlin, where he completed his doctorate in 1914 under the influence of Carl Stumpf and the emerging Gestalt psychology, an orientation that focuses on “wholes” rather than the parts that make up the whole. He was injured in combat while serving in the German army in World War I, and he wrote “War Landscape” (1917), an initial description of field theory, during his recovery.
He returned to lecture at the Psychological Institute at the University of Berlin. He encouraged social action on important issues such as democracy in government and social organizations. Women were included in his research circle at a time when many scholars excluded them.
Lewin was invited to the United States to present at the International Congress of Psychologists at Yale in 1929. He presented a film that depicted the “field forces” at work on a child learning a new behavior, and he interested many psychologists in his ideas. Field theory suggests that behavior is a function of the totality of interdependent facts and circumstances that exist at the time the behavior occurs.
The presentation led to an invitation to serve as a visiting professor at Stanford University in 1930. Adolf Hitler’s rise to power and increasing anti-Semitism in Germany led Lewin to accept a temporary appointment at Cornell University and then a faculty position at the University of Iowa and the Child Welfare Research Station, where he stayed until 1945. He published his first major work, A Dynamic Theory of Personality, in 1935.
Lewin consulted and conducted research for the United States during World War II regarding public policy issues. He developed action research, a study of the conditions and effects of types of social action that were used to facilitate social change. He was interested in minority issues and relations between groups of people, which led to the establishment of the Research Center for Group Dynamics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and action research, which gave birth to a type of group process known as the T-group or sensitivity group. Such groups used feedback, disconfirmation of a person’s existing beliefs, and participant observations to motivate change.
Lewin died in 1947 at the age of fifty-six. The posthumous publication of Resolving Social Conflicts (1948) provided a collection of papers he wrote during his time in the United States.
Bibliography
Bargal, David, Martin Gold, and Miriam Lewin. The Heritage of Kurt Lewin: Theory, Research, and Practice. New York: Plenum, 1992. An overview of Lewin’s work and influence.
Lewin, Miriam A. “Kurt Lewin: His Psychology and a Daughter’s Recollections.” In Portraits of Pioneers in Psychology, edited by Gregory A. Kimble and Michael Wertheimer. Vol. 3. Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, 1998. Chapter in a series on key people in psychology, written by Lewin’s daughter.
Perecman, Ellen, and Sara R. Curran, eds. A Handbook for Social Science Field Research: Essays and Bibliographic Sources on Research Design and Methods. London: Sage, 2006. Essays from noted scholars in the arena of field research comment on such topics as ethnography, oral history, surveys, and ethics. Includes helpful and extensive bibliography.