Behavior is a function of the person and the environment: B = f(P, E).
Psychologists
Kurt Zadek Lewin
German-American psychologist and the founder of modern social, organizational, and applied psychology (1890-1947). He extended Gestalt psychology into the social domain and formulated B=f(P,E), behavior as a function of the person and the environment. He fled Nazi persecution to the United States in 1933, became a naturalized citizen in 1940, and founded the Research Center for Group Dynamics at MIT. He coined the terms action research and group dynamics and is widely credited with the three-step change model of unfreeze-change-refreeze that still underpins organizational change practice today, training Leon Festinger, Morton Deutsch, and an entire generation of applied social psychologists worldwide.
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Kurt Zadek Lewin's Other Quotes
There is nothing so practical as a good theory.
Research that produces nothing but books will not suffice.
If you want truly to understand something, try to change it.
A successful change includes three aspects: unfreezing the present level, moving to the new level, and freezing group life on the new level.
Related Quotes
Gradualness and discipline. This is the most important thing. From the very beginning of your work, train yourself to the strictest gradualness in accumulating knowledge.
-- Ivan Pavlov
Never think that you already know all. However highly you are appraised, always have the courage to say of yourself: I am ignorant.
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Crises and deadlocks when they occur have at least this advantage, that they force us to think.
-- Jawaharlal Nehru
The ego, driven by the id, confined by the super-ego, repulsed by reality, struggles to master its economic task of bringing about harmony among the forces and influences working in and upon it.
-- Anna Freud