Kurt Lewin

According to Ralph White (1992), who worked with Lewin in Iowa, one of Lewin's major contributions was stimulating scientific creativity in his colleagues. White's personal assessment of Lewin's work and life provides a helpful starting point. White began work with Lewin at the University of Iowa in 1937. He noted that Lewin's team was extremely creative and friendly socially as well as professionally. It was led by Lewin, but in a democratic way. Lewin appears to have been the centerpoint of the group, holding it together with his personal qualities and scientific enthusiasm.

But he was not just a charismatic leader with nothing to offer theoretically or methodologically. He also made significant contributions in both theory and methods. White (1992) noted that he provided much of the evidence and theory to refute stimulusresponse theory, while Ash (1992) indicated that it was Lewin's presentation in 1929 that began the change in American psychology regarding the nature of intellectual behavior and learning.

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undation for the field of group dynamics. However, there is also a second major contribution in these experiments. This is the process, or form, of the experiments themselves. According to both White (1992) and Ash (1992), Lewin's contribution in the field of experimentation was in studying those behaviors that others had previously thought were not amenable to study by the use of experimental treatments. In other words, before Lewin, psychologists had not thought it possible to study such things as anger in groups in any systematic way. Methodology. This design of experiments on issues previously considered intractable was one methodological contribution from Lewin. There were a number of others, however. One of the major contributions was Lewin's use of film. According to Van Elteren (1992), Lewin utilized film in three different ways. First, he used it as a methodological tool for analyzing human social behavior. Second, his was an early use of film as part of a multimedia presentation, as an audiovisual tool that assisted in expressing his theoretical concepts. Finally, Lewin used film to keep personal records of family and friends. All of these contributed to his understanding of human behavior in social settings
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