Kurt Lewin's Work is Seminal

Kurt Lewin's work is seminal for the social sciences. Over the past few years, he has become one of my heroes. Still, Lewin's work is pretty much ignored today by personality psychologists who repeatedly conduct studies in which the social context of the individual's target behavior is not fully considered. Lewin's (1936) Principles of Topological Psychology is perhaps one of the most important psychology monographs ever written (i.e., sez me), but one can hardly find it in a University library these days.

Lewin's basic equation was B = f(PE), where B is a person's behavior, P stands for the dispositional characteristics of the individual, and E is the perceived social environment in which the target behavior is perceived. Lewin's point that P and E are not independent variables is enormously significant; to cleave the attitude from the social context for all phenomena under examination is potentially to engage in what I call [I]obfuscation by simplification[/I]. A psychologist from the personality tradition might argue that there is little or incomplete empirical evidence to support this line of inquiry; to which any good Neo-Lewinian worth their salt might say, "Perhaps, but how can we ignore obviously related variables?"

An interesting read in the Neo-Lewinian tradition is Professor Zimbardo's (2007) The Lucifer Effect, which basically argues for a line of inquiry toward dispositional characteristics AND social context to understand how normally "good" individuals can engage in non-typical "bad" behaviors. Additionally, the Stanford Prison Experiments are used to shed light on the problems with the Abu Ghraib prison fiasco.

Kurt Lewin should be a household name, such as Albert Einstein, but his work is barely understood outside of graduate school...

References

Lewin, K. (1936). Principles of topological psychology. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Zimbardo, P. (2007). The lucifer effect: Understanding how good people turn evil. New York: Random House.