| Lippitt did his undergraduate work at Springfield College in Massachusetts and earned the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at the State University of Iowa. There he became a close associate of Kurt Lewin. While at Iowa, along with Ralph White he performed the series of research studies on the effects of various kinds of leadership: democratic, authoritarian. and laissez-faire with
boys' groups. These studies are now classics and still frequently quoted in a variety of psychology texts. They demonstrated how conditions may be changed to improve social relations in many
settings. After World War 11 he rejoined Lewin and his colleagues who had founded the Research Center for Group Dynamics at MIT. After Lewin's untimely death in 1947. the center moved to the University of Michigan where the name was changed to the Institute for Social Research (1ST). During the next decades Lippitt directed his efforts toward planned change, writing a book on the subject. His professional life was devoted to social psychology and its applications. |
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