Title: "There is Nothing So Practical as a Good Theory:" Lewin's Change Model Elaborated
The power of Lewin's theorizing lay not in a formal propositional kind of theory but in his ability to build "models" of processes that drew attention to the right kinds of variables that needed to be conceptualized and observed. In my opinion, the most powerful of these was his model of the change process in human systems. I found this model to be fundamentally necessary in trying to explain various phenomena I had observed, and I found that it lent itself very well to refinement and elaboration.
My own early work in clinical/social psychology dealt with the attitude changes that had occurred in military and civilian prisoners of the Chinese Communists during the Korean War (Schein, 1956, 1961, 1968). I found contemporary theories of attitude change to be trivial and superficial when applied to some of the profound changes that the prisoners had undergone, but I found Lewin's basic change model of unfreezing, changing, and refreezing to be a theoretical foundation upon which change theory could be built solidly. The key, of course, was to see that human change, whether at the individual or group level, was a profound psychological dynamic process that involved painful unlearning without loss of ego identity and difficult relearning as one cognitively attempted to restructure one's thoughts, perceptions, feelings, and attitudes.
Unfreezing as a concept entered the change literature early to highlight the observation that the stability of human behavior was based on "quasi-stationary equilibria" supported by a large force field of driving and restraining forces. For change to occur, this force field had to be altered under complex psychological conditions because, as was often noted, just adding a driving force toward change often produced an immediate counterforce to maintain the equilibrium. This observation led to the important insight that the equilibrium could more easily be moved if one could remove restraining forces since there were usually already driving forces in the system. Unfortunately, restraining forces were harder to get at because they were often personal psychological defenses or group norms embedded in the organizational or community culture.
The full ramifications of such restraining forces were only understood after decades of frustrating encounters with resistance to change, and only then did we begin to pay attention to the work of cognitive psychologists on perceptual defenses, to what psychoanalysts and the Tavistock group were trying to show us with their work on denial, splitting, and projection, and to Argyris's seminal work on defensive routines (e.g., Argyris, 1990; Hirschhorn, 1988). In trying to explain what happened to POWs, I was led to the necessity to further "unpack" the concept of unfreezing and to highlight what really goes on there. Unfreezing is basically three processes, each of which has to be present to some degree for readiness and motivation to change to be generated.
1. Disconfirmation
It is my belief that all forms of learning and change start with some form of dissatisfaction or frustration generated by data that disconfirm our expectations or hopes. Whether we are talking about adaptation to some new environmental circumstances that thwart the satisfaction of some need, or whether we are talking about genuinely creative and generative learning of the kind Peter Senge focuses on, some disequilibrium based on disconfirming information is a prerequisite (Senge, 1990). Disconfirmation, whatever its source, functions as a primary driving force in the quasi-stationary equilibrium.
Disconfirming information is not enough, however, because we can ignore the information, dismiss it as irrelevant, blame the undesired outcome on others or fate, or, as is most common, simply deny its validity. In order to become motivated to change, we must accept the information and connect it to something we care about. The disconfirmation must arouse what we can call "survival anxiety" or the feeling that if we do not change we will fail to meet our needs or fail to achieve some goals or ideals that we have set for ourselves ("survival guilt").
2. Induction of Guilt or Survival Anxiety
In order to feel survival anxiety or guilt, we must accept the disconfirming data as valid and relevant. What typically prevents us from doing so, what causes us to react defensively, is a second kind of anxiety which we can call "learning anxiety," or the feeling that if we allow ourselves to enter a learning or change process, if we admit to ourselves and others that something is wrong or imperfect, we will lose our effectiveness, our self-esteem and maybe even our identity. Most humans need to assume that they are doing their best at all times, and it may be a real loss of face to accept and even "embrace" errors (Michael, 1973, 1993). Adapting poorly or failing to meet our creative potential often looks more desirable than risking failure and loss of self-esteem in the learning process. Learning anxiety is the fundamental restraining force which can go up in direct proportion to the amount of disconfirmation, leading to the maintenance of the equilibrium by defensive avoidance of the disconfirming information. It is the dealing with learning anxiety, then, that is the key to producing change, and Lewin understood this better than anyone. His involving of workers on the pajama assembly line, his helping the housewives groups to identify their fear of being seen as less "good" in the community if they used the new proposed meats and his helping them to evolve new norms, was a direct attempt to deal with learning anxiety. This process can be conceptualized in its own right as creating for the learner some degree of "psychological safety."
3. Creation of Psychological Safety or Overcoming of Learning Anxiety
My basic argument is that unless sufficient psychological safety is created, the disconfirming information will be denied or in other ways defended against, no survival anxiety will be felt, and, consequently, no change will take place. The key to effective change management, then, becomes the ability to balance the amount of threat produced by disconfirming data with enough psychological safety to allow the change target to accept the information, feel the survival anxiety, and become motivated to change.
The true artistry of change management lies in the various kinds of tactics that change agents employ to create psychological safety. For example, working in groups, creating parallel systems that allow some relief from day-to-day work pressures, providing practice fields in which errors are embraced rather than feared, providing positive visions to encourage the learner, breaking the learning process into manageable steps, providing online coaching and help all serve the function of reducing learning anxiety and thus creating genuine motivation to learn and change.
Unfortunately, motivation is not enough. A theory or model of change must also explain the actual learning and change mechanisms, and here Lewin's cognitive models were also very helpful in providing a theoretical base.
Cognitive Redefinition
By what means does a motivated learner learn something new when we are dealing with thought processes, feelings, values, and attitudes? Fundamentally it is a process of "cognitive restructuring," which has been labeled by many others as frame breaking or reframing. It occurs by taking in new information that has one or more of the following impacts: 1) semantic redefinition--we learn that words can mean something different from what we had assumed; 2) cognitive broadening--we learn that a given concept can be much more broadly interpreted than what we had assumed; and 3) new standards of judgment or evaluation--we learn that the anchors we used for judgment and comparison are not absolute, and if we use a different anchor our scale of judgment shifts.
An example will make this clear. The concept of "teamwork" is today highly touted in organizational circles, yet the evidence for effective teamwork is at best minimal. The problem lies in the fact that in the U.S., the cultural assumption that society revolves around the individual and individual rights is so deeply embedded that when teamwork is advocated we pay lip service but basically do not change our individualistic assumption. How then does change in this area come about? First, we would need to redefine teamwork as the coordination of individual activities for pragmatic ends, not the subordination of the individual to the group. If we define teamwork as individual subordination, as treating the group to be more important than the individual, we arouse all the defenses that lead to quips like camels being horses constructed by a committee, negative images of "group think," lynch mobs, etc.
Second, the redefinition of teamwork also allows one to redefine individualism in a way that preserves its primacy, not to "substitute" groupism for individualism. This process of redefinition in effect enlarges the concept of individualism to include the ability and obligation to work with others when the task demands it. In other words, helping a team to win is not inconsistent with individualism. And, third, one can change the standards by which individual performance is rewarded. Instead of rewarding "rugged individualism" or the competitive winning out over others (which makes collaborative behavior look "weak"), individuals can be increasingly rewarded for their ability to create, lead, and participate in teams (which makes collaborative behavior look "strong"). The best individual, then, is the one who can be an effective team player. What Lewin did with the housewives was to help them to change their standard of what was an acceptable meat so that kidneys, liver, etc. became cognitively redefined as acceptable to buy and serve. This process is fundamental to any change if one wants it to last.
The new information that makes any or all of these processes possible comes into us by one of two fundamental mechanisms--1) learning through positive or defensive identification with some available positive or negative role model, or 2) learning through a trial and error process based on scanning the environment for new concepts (Schein, 1968).
Imitation and Positive or Defensive Identification with a Role Model
Cognitive redefinition occurs when the learner has become unfrozen, i
From India
Acknowledge(0)
Amend(0)
5The power of Lewin's theorizing lay not in a formal propositional kind of theory but in his ability to build "models" of processes that drew attention to the right kinds of variables that needed to be conceptualized and observed. In my opinion, the most powerful of these was his model of the change process in human systems. I found this model to be fundamentally necessary in trying to explain various phenomena I had observed, and I found that it lent itself very well to refinement and elaboration.
My own early work in clinical/social psychology dealt with the attitude changes that had occurred in military and civilian prisoners of the Chinese Communists during the Korean War (Schein, 1956, 1961, 1968). I found contemporary theories of attitude change to be trivial and superficial when applied to some of the profound changes that the prisoners had undergone, but I found Lewin's basic change model of unfreezing, changing, and refreezing to be a theoretical foundation upon which change theory could be built solidly. The key, of course, was to see that human change, whether at the individual or group level, was a profound psychological dynamic process that involved painful unlearning without loss of ego identity and difficult relearning as one cognitively attempted to restructure one's thoughts, perceptions, feelings, and attitudes.
Unfreezing as a concept entered the change literature early to highlight the observation that the stability of human behavior was based on "quasi-stationary equilibria" supported by a large force field of driving and restraining forces. For change to occur, this force field had to be altered under complex psychological conditions because, as was often noted, just adding a driving force toward change often produced an immediate counterforce to maintain the equilibrium. This observation led to the important insight that the equilibrium could more easily be moved if one could remove restraining forces since there were usually already driving forces in the system. Unfortunately, restraining forces were harder to get at because they were often personal psychological defenses or group norms embedded in the organizational or community culture.
The full ramifications of such restraining forces were only understood after decades of frustrating encounters with resistance to change, and only then did we begin to pay attention to the work of cognitive psychologists on perceptual defenses, to what psychoanalysts and the Tavistock group were trying to show us with their work on denial, splitting, and projection, and to Argyris's seminal work on defensive routines (e.g., Argyris, 1990; Hirschhorn, 1988). In trying to explain what happened to POWs, I was led to the necessity to further "unpack" the concept of unfreezing and to highlight what really goes on there. Unfreezing is basically three processes, each of which has to be present to some degree for readiness and motivation to change to be generated.
1. Disconfirmation
It is my belief that all forms of learning and change start with some form of dissatisfaction or frustration generated by data that disconfirm our expectations or hopes. Whether we are talking about adaptation to some new environmental circumstances that thwart the satisfaction of some need, or whether we are talking about genuinely creative and generative learning of the kind Peter Senge focuses on, some disequilibrium based on disconfirming information is a prerequisite (Senge, 1990). Disconfirmation, whatever its source, functions as a primary driving force in the quasi-stationary equilibrium.
Disconfirming information is not enough, however, because we can ignore the information, dismiss it as irrelevant, blame the undesired outcome on others or fate, or, as is most common, simply deny its validity. In order to become motivated to change, we must accept the information and connect it to something we care about. The disconfirmation must arouse what we can call "survival anxiety" or the feeling that if we do not change we will fail to meet our needs or fail to achieve some goals or ideals that we have set for ourselves ("survival guilt").
2. Induction of Guilt or Survival Anxiety
In order to feel survival anxiety or guilt, we must accept the disconfirming data as valid and relevant. What typically prevents us from doing so, what causes us to react defensively, is a second kind of anxiety which we can call "learning anxiety," or the feeling that if we allow ourselves to enter a learning or change process, if we admit to ourselves and others that something is wrong or imperfect, we will lose our effectiveness, our self-esteem and maybe even our identity. Most humans need to assume that they are doing their best at all times, and it may be a real loss of face to accept and even "embrace" errors (Michael, 1973, 1993). Adapting poorly or failing to meet our creative potential often looks more desirable than risking failure and loss of self-esteem in the learning process. Learning anxiety is the fundamental restraining force which can go up in direct proportion to the amount of disconfirmation, leading to the maintenance of the equilibrium by defensive avoidance of the disconfirming information. It is the dealing with learning anxiety, then, that is the key to producing change, and Lewin understood this better than anyone. His involving of workers on the pajama assembly line, his helping the housewives groups to identify their fear of being seen as less "good" in the community if they used the new proposed meats and his helping them to evolve new norms, was a direct attempt to deal with learning anxiety. This process can be conceptualized in its own right as creating for the learner some degree of "psychological safety."
3. Creation of Psychological Safety or Overcoming of Learning Anxiety
My basic argument is that unless sufficient psychological safety is created, the disconfirming information will be denied or in other ways defended against, no survival anxiety will be felt, and, consequently, no change will take place. The key to effective change management, then, becomes the ability to balance the amount of threat produced by disconfirming data with enough psychological safety to allow the change target to accept the information, feel the survival anxiety, and become motivated to change.
The true artistry of change management lies in the various kinds of tactics that change agents employ to create psychological safety. For example, working in groups, creating parallel systems that allow some relief from day-to-day work pressures, providing practice fields in which errors are embraced rather than feared, providing positive visions to encourage the learner, breaking the learning process into manageable steps, providing online coaching and help all serve the function of reducing learning anxiety and thus creating genuine motivation to learn and change.
Unfortunately, motivation is not enough. A theory or model of change must also explain the actual learning and change mechanisms, and here Lewin's cognitive models were also very helpful in providing a theoretical base.
Cognitive Redefinition
By what means does a motivated learner learn something new when we are dealing with thought processes, feelings, values, and attitudes? Fundamentally it is a process of "cognitive restructuring," which has been labeled by many others as frame breaking or reframing. It occurs by taking in new information that has one or more of the following impacts: 1) semantic redefinition--we learn that words can mean something different from what we had assumed; 2) cognitive broadening--we learn that a given concept can be much more broadly interpreted than what we had assumed; and 3) new standards of judgment or evaluation--we learn that the anchors we used for judgment and comparison are not absolute, and if we use a different anchor our scale of judgment shifts.
An example will make this clear. The concept of "teamwork" is today highly touted in organizational circles, yet the evidence for effective teamwork is at best minimal. The problem lies in the fact that in the U.S., the cultural assumption that society revolves around the individual and individual rights is so deeply embedded that when teamwork is advocated we pay lip service but basically do not change our individualistic assumption. How then does change in this area come about? First, we would need to redefine teamwork as the coordination of individual activities for pragmatic ends, not the subordination of the individual to the group. If we define teamwork as individual subordination, as treating the group to be more important than the individual, we arouse all the defenses that lead to quips like camels being horses constructed by a committee, negative images of "group think," lynch mobs, etc.
Second, the redefinition of teamwork also allows one to redefine individualism in a way that preserves its primacy, not to "substitute" groupism for individualism. This process of redefinition in effect enlarges the concept of individualism to include the ability and obligation to work with others when the task demands it. In other words, helping a team to win is not inconsistent with individualism. And, third, one can change the standards by which individual performance is rewarded. Instead of rewarding "rugged individualism" or the competitive winning out over others (which makes collaborative behavior look "weak"), individuals can be increasingly rewarded for their ability to create, lead, and participate in teams (which makes collaborative behavior look "strong"). The best individual, then, is the one who can be an effective team player. What Lewin did with the housewives was to help them to change their standard of what was an acceptable meat so that kidneys, liver, etc. became cognitively redefined as acceptable to buy and serve. This process is fundamental to any change if one wants it to last.
The new information that makes any or all of these processes possible comes into us by one of two fundamental mechanisms--1) learning through positive or defensive identification with some available positive or negative role model, or 2) learning through a trial and error process based on scanning the environment for new concepts (Schein, 1968).
Imitation and Positive or Defensive Identification with a Role Model
Cognitive redefinition occurs when the learner has become unfrozen, i
From India
Acknowledge(0)Amend(0)
Hello. Your topic has been very helpful to my research. I just have a question regarding psychological safety.
If the disconfirmation is on poor work relations, such as lack of teamwork, absence of a sense of direction or interest towards a common goal, and you would need to suggest some changes like team building or empowerment workshops outside work hours, what are examples of psychological safety that can help?
Thank you and hope for your reply.
From United States, Pottstown
Acknowledge(0)Amend(0)
If the disconfirmation is on poor work relations, such as lack of teamwork, absence of a sense of direction or interest towards a common goal, and you would need to suggest some changes like team building or empowerment workshops outside work hours, what are examples of psychological safety that can help?
Thank you and hope for your reply.
From United States, Pottstown
Acknowledge(0)Amend(0)CiteHR is an AI-augmented HR knowledge and collaboration platform, enabling HR professionals to solve real-world challenges, validate decisions, and stay ahead through collective intelligence and machine-enhanced guidance. Join Our Platform.
Lewins-force-fi eld-analysis_37 3.pdf
Pf name & dob change letter format.doc