Sensitivity Training Groups

History

In the early 1900s, scholars began to take an interest in crowd psychology, which translated by the 1920s into an interest in studying normal social groupings and interactions to find solutions to [Page 742]social problems. In the 1930s, Kurt Lewin developed his field theory to understand the nature of individuals in the context of their experience of their social environment. Lewin also began research aimed at promoting social change.

The development of what was called the training laboratory was a collaborative effort of Leland Bradford, Ronald Lippitt, and Kenneth Benne, all of whom joined with Lewin in the summer of 1946 to run a workshop at Connecticut's State Teachers College. According to Lippitt, one evening, as they met to discuss the day's training, three of the training participants came in and indicated they wanted to listen to the discussion. Lewin agreed, and he and his colleagues tried to proceed as if the participants were not present.

When the discussion's focus turned to the behavior of one of these participants, that participant became agitated and declared that the scientists' view of her group's interactions was not correct, and she commenced to offer her own perceptions. Later in the discussion, the same happened with one of the other participants she, too, had a different perception of what had occurred within the group that day. At the end of the discussion, the three trainees asked if they could come back the next night for the discussion of that day's training events. The next night all 50 of the trainees came, and they all continued to come back every night of the training. According to Lippitt, this feedback and process review session became the most significant training event of the workshop.

This account of the emergence of the sensitivity training group is compatible with Lewin's threestage model of group decision making: (1) Unfreezing occurs when the participant has a basic attitude, belief, or behavior disconfirmed or called into question; (2) moving occurs when the participant feels safe and secure and uses information obtained from the group's feedback to arrive at new attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors; and (3) freezing reflects the extent to which the new changes are internalized. According to Kurt Back, the training group (T-group) provided a new method for unfreezing a group, and the strong interactions and emotions that came with feedback were a sign of accomplishing this change.

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