`ĭn), 1890–1947, American psychologist, b. Germany, Ph.D. Univ. of Berlin, 1914. He taught at the Univ. of Berlin before coming to the United States in 1932. He was professor (1935–44) of child psychology at the Univ. of Iowa and director (from 1944) of the research center for group dynamics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Influenced by Gestalt psychology, he was concerned with problems of motivation of individuals and of groups as determined by the context of a given situation. His work opened up a new realm of psychological investigation. His writings include A Dynamic Theory of Personality (tr. 1935), Principles of Topological Psychology (1936), The Conceptual Representation and Measurement of Psychological Forces (1938), and Resolving Social Conflicts (1947).Lewin, Kurt
(born Sept. 9, 1890, Mogilno, Ger.—died Feb. 12, 1947, Newtonville, Mass., U.S.) German-U.S. social psychologist. After training and teaching in Berlin, he immigrated to the U.S., where he taught at the University of Iowa (1935–45) and later became director of a group dynamics research centre at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1945–47). He is best known for his field theory of behaviour, which holds that human behaviour is a function of an individual's psychological environment. To fully understand and predict human behaviour, according to Lewin, one must view the totality of events in a person's psychological field, or “lifespace.” His works include A Dynamic Theory of Personality (1935) and Field Theory in Social Science (1951).
Lewin, Kurt (1890–1947) psychologist; born in Mogilno, Prussia (now Poland). Part of the German Gestalt psychology movement, his particular interests were group dynamics and memory. He emigrated to the United States in 1932. He taught at Cornell (1933–35), the University of Iowa (1935–44), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1944–47), where he also directed the research center for group dynamics. He attempted to analyze behavior using laboratory techniques. He saw behavior in terms of forces in the psychological "field" and described individual behavior in terms of the interaction of internal and environmental psychological forces. He compared, for instance, the effect of democratic and authoritarian behavior on groups.
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