Kurt Lewin Quotes
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Life space was defined as the totality of facts which determine the behavior (B) of an individual (or group/organization) at a certain moment. The life space (L) represents the totality of possible events. The life space includes the person (P) and the environment (E). B = f(L) = f(P.E)
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We no longer seek the 'cause' of events in the nature of a single isolated object, but in the relationship between an object and its surroundings.
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The essential meaning of such an assertion is this: events a and b are necessarily dependent moments of a single unified occurrence . The mathematical formula states the quantitative relations involved in the occurrence. Already in such cases the dependent moment of the occurrence are moments that obtain temporally by side.
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A business man once stated that there is nothing so practical as a good theory.
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If you want to truly understand something, try to change it.
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The survival and development of democracy depends not so much on the development of democratic ideals which are wide-spread and strong. Today, more than ever before, democracy depends upon the development of efficient forms of democratic social management and upon the spreading of the skill in such management to the common man.
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The valence of an object usually derives from the fact that the object is a means to the satisfaction of a need, or has indirectly something to do with the satisfaction of a need.
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It is not the similarity or dissimilarity of individuals that constitutes a group, but interdependence of fate.
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Satiation may spill over outside the specific task to structurally similar tasks) and may end up in an early exhaustion of the occupational will.
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The research needed for social practice can best be characterized as research for social management or social engineering. It is a type of action research, a comparative research of the conditions and effects of various forms of social action, and research leading to social action. Research that produces nothing but books will not suffice.
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Even if all the laws of psychology were known, one could make a prediction about the behavior of a man only if in addition to the laws, the special nature of the particular situation were known.
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A goal can play an essential role in the psychological situation without being clearly present in consciousness.
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For any type of social management, It is of great practical importance that levels of quasi-stationary equilibria can be changed in either of two ways: by adding forces in the desired direction, or by diminishing opposing forces.
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The young mathematical disciple 'topology' might be of some help in making psychology a real science.
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The objective of social change might concern the nutritional standard of consumption, the economic standard of living, the type of group relation, the output of a factory, the productivity of an educational team. It is important that a social standard to be changed does not have the nature of a 'thing' but of a 'process.'.
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Lewin formally defines a Gestalt as: a system whose parts are dynamically connected in such a way that a change of one part results in a change of all other parts.
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Whatever is common to children of a given age is set up as the fundamental character of that age. The fact that three-year-old children are quite often negative is considered evidence that negativism is inherent in the nature of three-year-olds, and the concept of a negative age or stage is then regarded as an explanation for the appearance of negativism.
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A successful individual typically sets his next goal somewhat but not too much above his last achievement. In this way he steadily raises his level of aspiration.
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Conflict can be defined as the opposition of approximately equally strong field forces.
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For Aristotelian physics the membership of an object in a given class was of critical importance, because for Aristotle the class defined the essence or essential nature of the object, and thus determined its behavior in both positive and negative respects.
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A conflict is to be characterized psychologically as a situation in which oppositely directed, simultaneously acting forces of approximately equal strength work upon the individual.
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Only by the concrete whole which comprises the object and the situation are the vectors which determine the dynamics of the event defined.
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The study of the conditions for change begins appropriately with an analysis of the conditions for 'no change,' that is, for the state of equilibrium.
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In psychology one can begin to describe the whole situation by roughly distinguishing the person (P) and his environment (E). Every psychological event depends upon the state of the person and at the same time on the environment, although their relative importance is different in different cases.