It was perhaps only the youthful optimism of a new science that allowed Kurt Lewin and his colleagues to believe that they had within their grasp the key elements of a ''field theory of the social sciences.'' Social psychology made great strides in 1930s and 1940s. Lewin and Lippitt (1938) seemed to have demonstrated in the laboratory the inherent superiority of democracy over autocracy. Lewin (1948) provided a theoretical framework for resolving social conflicts, and after his death his colleagues quickly shaped his legacy into a social scientific theory (Lewin, 1951). How could they resist? The physicists had just announced developments that shook the foundations of Newtonian physics. It was expected that Einstein, safely ensconced in the Institute for Advanced Studies, would any day announce the ''unified field theory'' that would once again make the physical world an orderly place. Could they ask less of the social sciences?
By 1968 one of Lewin's former students, Morton Deutsch, would declare field theory—and all other grand theories of social psychology—moribund. A few years later, Nicholas Mullins (1973) would eulogize the entire field of small group research as ''the light that failed,'' a victim of the untimely death of its only real intellectual leader, Kurt Lewin. Mullins's borrowing of the Kipling title is compelling not only because it suggests that small group research promised much and failed to deliver but also because it suggests that field theory extended its reach beyond its grasp. In recent years there has been a revival of interest in field theory, though, for better or worse, much of the youthful optimism has faded.
LEWIN AND THE ORIGINS OF FIELD THEORY
Lewin's (1935) A Dynamic Theory of Personality called for a shift in psychology from the Aristotelian to the Galilean mode of thought. Epitomized by the now-classic formulation ''behavior is a function of personality and environment,'' or B=f(PE), the new perspective placed social psychology squarely at the intersection of psychology and sociology.
It required abandoning the hope that social behavior could be explained by reference to personality variables and seeking explanations in the dynamic relationships among actors and situations. In this topic, Lewin defined the building blocks of the field theory that was to come: force (a vector directed at a point of application), valence (the push or pull of the force), and conflict (the opposition of roughly equivalent forces). At this point, he clearly had in mind a metric space of social life, the concepts of vector and direction having limited meaning in topological (or nonmetric) space.
The young field of topological mathematics soon freed Lewin from the necessity of defining a metric space of social life. In Principles of Topological Psychology, he defined the new nonmetric space: ''By this term is meant that we are dealing with mathematical relationships which can be characterized without measurement. No distances are defined in topological space'' (Lewin 1936, p. 53). The concept was a failure; his presentation to the mathematicians at MIT made it clear that he had overreached. He had ventured into the murky realm of topology when, in fact, he always intended to return to metric space. Two additional difficulties also appear in this volume. First, Lewin insisted that the new topological psychology deal with the entire life-space of the individual. Much as Simmel (1917) conceived of the individual as lying at the intersection of various ''social circles,'' Lewin saw the individual life-space as made up of the totality of available social rations. For practical purposes, this made the specification of a single life-space almost impossibly complex. If one then tried to understand even a small group of actors by merging life-spaces, the problem became overwhelming. Second, Lewin often seemed to think of life-space in terms of physical space. Thus, locomotion almost literally meant moving from one physical location to another.
A collection of Lewin's (1948) more applied American papers, Resolving Social Conflicts, appeared the year he died. Lewin translated concrete conflicts into abstract life-space ''capsules.'' They were designed to illustrate the concept of ''range of free movement'' as ''a topological region encircled by other regions that are inaccessible'' (Lewin 1948, p. 5). The researchers who followed him have since used his graphic depiction of life-space as capsules only rarely. In the same volume, Lewin defined two useful characteristics of the boundaries between sectors of the life-space: sharpness (the clarity of boundaries) and rigidity (the ease with which boundaries may shift). Field Theory in the Social Sciences, a collection of Lewin's more theoretical writings, appeared in 1951. In these papers, Lewin introduced the most crucial concepts. Conflict is defined as ''the overlapping of two force fields,'' force as ''the tendency toward locomotion,'' and position as ''a spatial relation of regions'' (1951, pp. 39-40). The example of a conflict between husband and wife illustrates Lewin's concept of ''subjective'' and ''objective'' social fields. The subjectively defined life-spaces of two people differ, and so a single interpersonal act may have very different meanings for the two actors. Repeated reality testing is necessary to bring the individuals to a consensually defined ''objective'' social life-space.
Lewin never really succeeded in developing a predictive theory of group dynamics: ''The clarification of the problems of past and future has been much delayed by the fact that the psychological field which exists at a given time contains the views of that individual about his future and past'' (Lewin 1951, p. 53). The field is still struggling with this problem, lacking an adequate theory of even state-to-state transition.
In the years following Lewin's death, the focus shifted from the theoretical to the applied. Much of the work done at the University of Michigan's Research Center for Group Dynamics and at the National Training Laboratory's facilities in Bethel, Maine, was been only very loosely tied to the concepts of field theory. While Lewin is often credited with founding the field of organizational development (Weisbord 1987), his careful work on the nature of the social field is often ignored in favor of deceptively simple quotes such as ''There's nothing so practical as a good theory.'' While Lewin believed that he could not be sure that he had fully understood a social situation unless he could change it, he never assumed that the ability to bring about change implied understanding. Only in the past several years has attention returned to the difficult legacy of an incomplete field theory.
THE CURRENT STATE OF FIELD THEORY
The Society for the Advancement of Field Theory was founded at a Temple University conference in 1984. Stivers and Wheelan (1986) have since published the proceedings of the conference as The Lewin Legacy. Later, papers from the two subsequent biennial conferences have been published as Advances in Field Theory (Wheelan et al. 1990).
The Lewin Legacy includes historical essays and applications of field theory to therapy, education, organizational development, and community psychology. A brief set of papers at the end calls for a revitalization of Lewinian thought, particularly within the tradition of action research. It is clear, however, that the authors are responding more to Lewin's research philosophy than to the theoretical constructs of his field theory.
Advances in Field Theory continues to focus on application, but with more explicit reference to theory. Gold's (1990) paper titled ''Two Field Theories'' addresses the issue of whether field theory is a ''real theory'' or simply an ''approach.'' It distinguishes between the theory as described above and the approach—or ''metatheory''—that has served as the guide for the generations of scholars that followed Lewin. Pointing out that much of social psychology has drifted away from the consideration of social life-space toward the understanding of internal cognitive processes, the author calls for a revitalization of the Galilean mode of thought. The remainder of the volume is once again directed toward the solution of practical problems. The authors deal with families, psychiatry, human development, education, conflict, organizations, and cross-cultural concerns. Virtually all of this work seems to draw on Lewin's ''approach,'' or ''metatheory,'' rather than his ''specific field theory.''
All of this is not to deny the tremendous impact that Lewin and his students have had on both academia and the resolution of social problems. What impressed his students most was Lewin's commitment to democracy and fairness. This commitment started in the research community, where he unselfishly gave of his time and intellect to help his students and colleagues expand their understanding of society. It extended to society at large. He and his students worked on behalf of the war effort during World War II and actively combated prejudice at home. As Weisbord (1987) has pointed out, the field of organizational development (OD) probably owes its existence and current shape to Lewin and his students. Organizational development is as much an ideology as a theory of change; its democratic value orientation owes much to the ideas of Kurt Lewin. Citing Marrow's (1969) excellent biography of Lewin, Weisbord draws parallels between the lives of Frederick Taylor and Kurt Lewin. Lewin's ''humanization of the Taylor system'' can be thought of as a blueprint for achieving the central goal of organizational development: increasing organizational effectiveness through the application of social science knowledge. In the seminal work in the field, The Human Side of Enterprise, Douglas McGregor (1960) blends the social science of Kurt Lewin with the humanistic psychology of Abraham Maslow (1954). The origins of participatory management, teambuilding, feedback, process consultation, and third-party intervention lie in both the theoretical and empirical work of Lewin and his colleagues: Ronald and Gordon Lippett, Ralph White, Kurt Back, Kenneth Beene, Dorwin Carwright, Alvin Zander, and others.
REKINDLING THE LIGHT: ATTEMPTS AT SYNTHESIS
The group process school, with its origins in Parsonian functionalism, has recently moved toward integration with the group dynamics school. Bales (1985), tracing the origins of field theory to Dewey's (1896) ''reflex arc,'' suggested that his three-dimensional conceptual space of social interaction made possible a new field theory. He argued for the universality of the dimensions but stopped short of offering the integration: ''The new field theory of social psychology is the needed framework, I believe, for the long-desired integration of social psychology. But to explore that thesis is a major undertaking, and here we must be content with a tentative case for the major dimensions of the framework'' (Bales 1985, p. 17). Bales's colleagues (Hare et al. 1996) have since announced the existence of this ''new field theory,'' but it has yet to be published in full and the academic community seems not to be eager to accept it as a major theoretical advance. Whether or not opinion changes as a result of the forthcoming publication of Bales's Social Interaction Systems: Theory and Measurement (1999) remains to be seen, but Bales's past efforts have been seen as much stronger in measurement than in theory. To the extent that Bales's new field theory has succeeded, it has been an operationalization of Lewin's concept of subjective life-space. His current theories of polarization are organized around positive and negative images in the minds of individual participants, not around consensual social reality.
Polley (1989) validated an updated set of dimensions and offered a series of explicit operational definitions for the basic concepts of Lewinian field theory. Figure 1 presents a ''field diagram'' that illustrates some of the basic principles. Two dimensions of interpersonal behavior (friendly-unfriendly and conventional-unconventional) define the plane of the diagram, and the third (dominant-submissive) is represented by circle size. Larger circles represent more dominant members, while smaller circles represent less dominant members. Members close together in the plane of the field diagram are drawn closer by vectors of positive valence, while distinct subgroups repel one another by vectors of negative valence. Members positioned at right angles to the central conflict between two subgroups tend to serve as mediators if they lie toward the ''friendly'' side of the space and as scapegoats if they lie toward the ''unfriendly'' side of the space. Both have the potential to draw opposing subgroups together, reducing the severity of the conflict. These analyses are based on ''group average'' perceptions and so are an attempt to operationalize Lewin's ''objective'' or consensual life-space. In 1994, Polley and Eid attempted an integration of the three major fields of small group theory: Lewin's group dynamics, Bales's group process, and Moreno's sociometry. But again, while the methodology and theory are in use at a number of research centers, there has been no consensus among the academic community that either the synthesis or the operationalization of field theory have succeeded.
Two additional lines of research have drawn heavily on field theory concepts. Both developed observation systems based for the measurement of temporal patterns in groups. McGrath's (1991) research group developed a theory known as time, interaction, and performance (TIP) and an observation system known as TEMPO. Wheelan's (1999) research group is seeking to develop a model of group development based on a synthesis of Lewinian group dynamics and Bion's psychodynamic theory of groups. (For more information on these two lines of research, see Observation Systems.)
THE FUTURE OF FIELD THEORY
It now appears that Deutsch's announcement of the death of field theory was essentially correct, though there are a few signs of life, as indicated above. However, neither Psychological Abstracts nor Sociological Abstracts have listed ''field theory'' as a research topic in recent years. A search of the years 1985-1999 using PsyINFO revealed 177 books and articles under the key phrase ''field theory.'' Of those, 65 dealt not with social field theory but with unrelated concepts that simply happened to share the same name. Of the remaining 112 citations, 31 were historical in nature and 63 used field theory as what Gold (1990) refers to as a ''general approach'' rather than as a specific theory capable of generating testable hypotheses. The remaining 18 articles use field theory as a specific theory. The applications of specific field theory are varied; the articles summarized below are not inclusive but should serve to give the flavor of the impact of Lewinian field theory.
Houston and associates (1988) and Dube and associates (1991) have applied field theoretic concepts to the study of customer evaluation of quality of service. Their model integrates concepts from marketing with those from Lewinian field theory to develop a deeper understanding of customer satisfaction. Granberg and Holberg (1986) compared behavioristic theory with field theory in attempting to explain voting behavior in Sweden and the United States. They conclude that field theory provides greater explanatory power than behavioristic psychology. In a related series of studies, Dillbeck (1990) and Assimakis and Dillbeck (1995) have employed field theory concepts to explain the effect of a Transcendental Meditation program on social change and perceptions of quality of life. Viser (1994) pitted field theory against Lazarsfeld's sociological model of voting behavior and contends that field theory provides a better explanation of voter choice. Greenberg (1988) employed field theory concepts of competing force fields to develop a model of employee theft behavior. Diederich (1997) used field theory as the basis for her multiattribute dynamic decision model (MADD), which she uses to predict decision making under time constraints. In the field of communications, Hample (1997) and Greene (1997) have based theories of ''message production'' on the Lewinian concepts of life-space and planes of reality and unreality. In the realm of therapy, Barber (1996) has employed field theory to the understanding of the educational community as an agent of change. Dube and Schmitt (1996) tested field theory-based predictions of perceived time judgments. They demonstrated that ''unfilled intervals'' were perceived to be longer if they occurred during a social process rather than before or after the process. Smith and Smith (1996) identified the concept of the social field as necessary and sufficient for the explanation of social behavior. Finally, Diamond (1992) contrasted field theory and rational choice as explanations for social policy choices and concluded that field theory explains many effects that are dismissed as ''irrational'' by the rational choice model. This brief tour of empirical research is not intended as comprehensive, but it does suggest that field theory as a specific theory continues to be taken seriously in a variety of disciplines.
Figure 1. A Three-Dimensional Field Diagram, Showing Two Subgroups, a Mediator, and a Scapegoat.
There may never be a widely accepted ''grand theory'' of social psychology. Certainly, the attempts that we have seen so far have not received widespread support from sociologists and psychologists. Still, Kurt Lewin's legacy is alive and well—as a philosophical orientation in a number of applied fields, such as organizational development, social work, conflict management, and therapy; as a general orientation for researchers in sociology and psychology; and even as a specific theory that continues to generate testable hypotheses. His all-too-brief career has served, and will likely continue to serve, as a guiding light to generations of researchers, practitioners, and social activists.