American cognitive psychologist and polymath Leon Festinger was born on the 8^th May, 1919 in Brooklyn, New York to Russian immigrant parents. He became one of the most influential psychologists of the 20^th century publishing on topics ranging from cognitive dissonance through to psychosocial archaeology (Open Learn, 2019a).

In 1939 as WW2 darkened Europe, Festinger left New York’ City College with a BSc in Psychology; three years later he earned a PhD from the University of Iowa (Open Learn, 2019a) where he had studied under the ‘Father of Social Psychology’ Kurt Lewin, undoubtedly gaining a foundation in Lewinian psychology.

A year after his PhD, Festinger made his own contribution to the war effort at the University of Rochester where he worked with statistics related to the training of pilots. This work lasted until 1945 and the end of the war when he was offered the post of Assistant Professor at MIT’s Research Centre for Group Dynamics once again with Kurt Lewin (Sheehy, Chapman & Conroy, 2002).

Festinger researched social pressures within informal groups, a research that not only influenced his later work but contributed unique methodology to the field of social psychology. Drawing on earlier work by Lewin and aided by PhD candidate Stanley Schachter who was later to gain a PhD under Festinger, he created a series of ‘tools’ for the study of social psychology, an orchestrated ‘theatre’ of sorts wherein specific roles could be manufactured and observed (Sheehy, Chapman & Conroy, 2002). These tools are notable in later studies such as the Stanford Prison Experiment conducted by Philip Zimbardo (Open Learn, 2019b).

1951 saw Festinger move to the University of Minnesota where he developed his Social Comparison Theory. This theory examined how a minority could influence a majority and was almost a counter study to his earlier studies under Lewin (Festinger, 1954). The study; particularly relevant to Western society and politics, influenced many other psychologists such as Serge Moscovici who researched how social minorities cause change by creating cognitive conflict through being deliberately non-conformist (Open Learn, 2019c).
Festinger’s own work highlighted the fact that ‘social quiescence’ is never achieved in Western Societies where there is an paradigm of self-betterment that precludes the concept of equal ability (Sheehy, Chapman & Conroy, 2002).

A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance was published in 1957 (Festinger, 2009) following on the heels of an earlier work ‘When Prophecy Fails’ (Festinger, Schachter & Riecken, 2009). This theory draws upon initial observations taken covertly from within an apocalyptic UFO cult and explores the psychological discomfort exhibited by an individual when their behaviour is incongruent with their beliefs or with empirical fact.
Cognitive Dissonance as a theory has been one of the most powerful and widely disseminated social psychologies of the last century, inspiring not only Festinger’s peers but subsequent generations of social psychologists (Sedikides, 2019).

In his late career Festinger moved into more diverse fields, attempting to understand the unpredictability of ancient technology genesis and publishing his ‘The Human Legacy’ in 1983 (Sheehy, Chapman & Conroy, 2002).
On February 11^th 1989 Leon Festinger died of cancer in New York City leaving a truly worthwhile legacy behind (Sheehy, Chapman & Conroy, 2002).

(Girap, 2019)

References

Festinger, L. (1954). A Theory of Social Comparison Processes. Human Relations, 7(2), 117-140. doi: 10.1177/001872675400700202

Festinger, L. (2009). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.

Festinger, L., Schachter, S., & Riecken, H. (2009). When prophecy fails. London, UK: Pinter Martin.

Girap, S. (2019). Leon Festinger. Retrieved 1 December 2019, from https://alchetron.com/Leon-Festinger

Open Learn. (2019a). Investigating Psychology: CHIPs. Retrieved 1 December 2019, from http://www2.open.ac.uk/openlearn/CHIPs/data/accessibility/nodes/218.html

Open Learn. (2019b). Investigating Psychology: CHIPs. Retrieved 1 December 2019, from http://www2.open.ac.uk/openlearn/CHIPs/data/accessibility/nodes/219.html

Open Learn. (2019c). Investigating Psychology: CHIPs. Retrieved 1 December 2019, from http://www2.open.ac.uk/openlearn/CHIPs/data/accessibility/nodes/335.html

Sedikides, C. (2019). Close relationships – What’s in it for us? | The Psychologist. Retrieved 1 December 2019, from https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-18/edition-8/close-relationships-whats-it-us

Sheehy, N., Chapman, A., & Conroy, W. (2003). Biographical dictionary of psychology (1st ed.). London: Routledge.

Suls, J. (2019). Leon Festinger | Biography & Facts. Retrieved 1 December 2019, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Leon-Festinger

Kurt Lewin was born to German Jewish parents in 1890 in what is now Poland. He was educated in Berlin before attending the University of Freiburg as a medical student and moving to Munich to study biology. As a soldier in the German Army he gained his PhD in 1916 under the supervision of empiricist Carl Stumpf who was a formative influence upon not only Lewin but also Wolfgang Kohler and Kurt Koffka; two founders of the Gestalt movement within psychology. Previously drawn to Watsonian behaviourism, Lewin became immersed in Gestalt theory, an influence which can be seen in his later work on hodological space (Bargal, Gold & Lewin, 1992).
Three years after the end of hostilities Lewin was appointed Professor of Philosophy and Psychology at Berlin University in 1921 (Bargal, Gold & Lewin, 1992), emigrating to England in 1933, and then to America to avoid the Nazi pogrom in Germany. Whilst in transit Lewin met briefly with a young Eric Trist who had read some of Lewin’s work and went on to treat shell-shock survivors after WW2 (Bargal, Gold & Lewin, 1992).

In American Lewin taught at Cornell before a teaching position at the University of Iowa graduated into a Professorship, which in 1944 allowed Lewin to co-found the Centre for Group Dynamics at MIT, where, amongst others he heavily influenced the work of psychologists such as Leon Festinger who went on to have significant ongoing influence in the field of social and cognitive psychology (Sheehy, Chapman & Conroy, 2003).

Lewin’s research was prolific and influenced successive generations of psychologists, earning him the title ‘The Father of Social Psychology’. His studies on Leadership Styles, utilising a summer camp of boys led him, somewhat unsurprisingly considering his brush with Nazism to conclude that Democracy was the predominant leadership style within groups, a fact which no doubt endeared him to his new nation (British Library, 2019).
Fritz Perls, the co-creator of Gestalt Therapy cites Lewin’s research on ‘Life Space’ also known as hodological space as influential in his research, but Lewin was far more prolific going on to publish several highly influential works including his Force Field Theory, study on group decision making, interdependence studies on groups and group dynamics (Britannica, 2019).

Lewin’s study of change management via his ‘Three Step model’ remains in use today, Professor Edgar Schein commented that the seminal nature and unique depth of insight of Lewin’s concepts and methods are so profound that they continue to enrich our understanding of how change happens and what role agents can and must play (Cummings, Bridgman & Brown, 2015).

Lewin’s T-Group method was closely tied to his Action research, wherein he pioneered the process of making changes within a group and simultaneously observing the results, a practice since implemented in many fields of human endeavour to achieve transformative and dynamic change (Dickens & Watkins, 1999).

Lewin died in 1947 at the relatively young age of 57;  this early death obfuscated his influence upon many aspects of social psychology and specifically human managerial relations in the US and UK (British Library, 2019). Nonetheless, Kurt Lewin remains a unique and key figure within the scholarly history of modern psychology.

(British Library, 2019)

References

Bargal, D., Gold, M., & Lewin, M. (1992). Introduction: The Heritage of Kurt Lewin. Journal Of Social Issues, 48(2), 3-13. doi: 10.1111/j.1540-4560.1992.tb00879.x

Britannica. (2019). Frederick S. Perls | German American psychiatrist. Retrieved 1 December 2019, from https://www.britannica.com/biography/Frederick-S-Perls

British Library. (2019). Kurt Lewin: Change management and group dynamics thinker. Retrieved 1 December 2019, from https://www.bl.uk/people/kurt-lewin

Cummings, S., Bridgman, T., & Brown, K. (2015). Unfreezing change as three steps: Rethinking Kurt Lewin’s legacy for change management. Human Relations, 69(1), 33-60. doi: 10.1177/0018726715577707

Dickens, L., & Watkins, K. (1999). Action Research: Rethinking Lewin. Management Learning, 30(2), 127-140. doi: 10.1177/1350507699302002

Sheehy, N., Chapman, A., & Conroy, W. (2003). Biographical dictionary of psychology (1st ed.). London: Routledge.

Born in 1832 near Manheim in Germany to a Lutheran pastor, grandson to a history professor, Wilhelm Wundt is considered to be the progenitor of modern psychology. After studying physiology, he graduated with a medical degree from the university of Heidelberg before achieving a doctorate in medicine and coming under the supervision of eminent physiologist Hermann von Helmholtz as an assistant. (Gregory, 2004).

After studying under Helmholz who was a notable influence, Wundt began to fully explore his concepts of experimental psychology; in fact his establishment of a psychology laboratory in Leipzig 1879 is considered to be the birth of modern psychology by many, although some argue that he had taught the subject since he became professor of philosophy in 1875 at Leipzig University.
Leipzig university enjoyed an established history of psychology prior to Wundt, with Ernst Weber and Gustav Fechner having researched sensory psychology and psychophysics, but it was not until 1883 that Wundt’s own laboratory and thus his new format of experimental psychology was recognised officially by the university as an institutional establishment (Pickren & Rutherford, 2010).

Wundt’s work led him to believe that the actuality of intellect was explainable through controlled inductive observation and measurement, he divorced the explanation for psychological consciousness from the concept of a ‘soul’ but was comfortable in utilising his background in philosophy to develop his ‘Wundtian’ Theory of Mind (Kim, 2016).
This rationalist belief that intellect was independent of sensory information led him to develop his theories of Apperception, or ‘relational perception’ (Kim, 2016).
His focus was upon replicable standardised measurements within the controlled environment of his laboratory. This new scientific method drew students from Germany, Britain, Russia, America and several east European nations and many of his students adopted his laboratory model as the standard for psychology (Kim, 2016).

During his lifetime he authored numerous influential books, written from the empirical perspective of a critical realist on such topics as Psychology, Ethics, Philosophy and Scientific Principles. Many remain in print today despite Psychology having moved on as a science (Kim, 2016).

Wundt taught 116 psychology graduates out of his total of 184 PhD graduates and they carried his teachings across the world. Amongst these students, who learned their craft under Wundt’s supervision and influence were James McKeen Cattell who was the first Professor of psychology in the USA at the University of Pennsylvania, G. Stanley Hall who pioneered Child Psychology, Walter Dill Scott an early Industrial Psychologist and Hugo Münsterberg who was an early Applied Psychologist (Pickren & Rutherford, 2010).

Another of his notable students Edward Titchener described Wundt’s work as Structuralism and went on to develop the field significantly (Pickren & Rutherford, 2010). Structuralism is the study of the basic elements of the mind which Wundt accomplished by training his students to introspectively observe their reactions to different stimuli within a controlled environment and then to document their responses. Since that time science has developed better measurement methods, displacing the somewhat subjective method of introspection, but his focus on the study of perceptual processes, ie: thoughts, images and feelings contributed to the study of and further interest in the field of cognitive psychology and alongside his laboratories established Wilhelm Wundt as a founding figure within the history of psychology.

(Unknown, 2019)

References:

Kim, A. (2016) Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Wilhelm Maximilian Wundt. Online at:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/wilhelm-wundt/ accessed 17-11-19

Pickren, W., & Rutherford, A. (2010). A history of modern psychology in context. Hoboken, N.J.: Wiley.

Titchener, E.B. (1921). The American Journal of Psychology, Vol. 32. No. 2. Online at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1413739 accessed 16-11-19

Gregory, R. L. (2004). The Oxford companion to the mind. Oxford UK: Oxford University Press.

Unknown. (2019). Wundt research group, ca. 1880 [Image]. Retrieved from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Leipzig%27te_i%C3%A7g%C3%B6zlem_denemeleri.jpg

Wellcome Collection gallery. (2019). Wilhelm Wundt [Image]. Retrieved from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/._Photogravure_by_Synnberg_Photo-gravure_Co.%2C_1_Wellcome_L0023076.jpg