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Research Deep Dive Day 2: The Psychology of Everything - Research Deep Dive

Research Deep Dive - Day 2 of The Quiet Power Playbook

The Quiet Power Playbook: For kind leaders who want promotions, not politics

By Martin Schweinsberg, Ph.D. | kindandquiet.com

About This Research Deep Dive

This research deep dive accompanies Day 2 of The Quiet Power Playbook email course, where we explore Lewin’s B = f(P,S) formula, the foundation to understand human behavior.

While the main email delivers the core insight in 3 minutes, this appendix provides more context and background knowledge if you want to dig deeper into the science.

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The Complete Lewin Formula Story

Kurt Lewin’s 1936 book “Principles of Topological Psychology” introduced B = f(P, E), where E stood for environment in the English translation (Or “Umgebung” in German). Modern psychology adopted “S” for situation to better capture the psychological meaning.

Lewin was fleeing Nazi Germany when he developed this formula, perhaps explaining his deep understanding of how situations can shape behavior. His work laid the foundation for both modern social psychology and organizational psychology.

The formula represents field theory, or the idea that behavior emerges from the total psychological ‘field’ at a given moment. Although the terminology has changed, the core idea is this: we can’t understand behavior only by looking at the person or environment separately; we must examine their interaction.

Milgram’s Full Findings: 18 Variations That Shocked the World

While the core email mentions three variations, Milgram conducted 18 different experimental conditions. Raw stats taken from Milgram (1974, see Tables 2, 3, and 4).

Proximity Series (Experiments 1-4)

Further Variations (Experiments 5-8)

Role Permutations (Experiments 9-16)

Group Effects (Experiments 17-18)

Each condition changed something about the situation. Thus, each variation shows how subtle situational differences can change behavior. Change on small thing in the situation and see: does this small change in the situation cause people to behave differently?

Why did Milgram conduct so many different versions of the same basic experiment?

A benign interpretation would assume that he was trying to identify the limits of the effect. Think of it like this: A responsible researcher finds an interesting effect. Instead of just shouting around “I found this cool effect”, she might see whether she can make that effect disappear by changing the situation. In the Milgram studies, you might ask what percentage of participants would apply these seemingly lethal shocks if they could freely choose the shock levels (Experiment 11). Milgram did that and found that then only 2.5% of people apply seemingly lethal shocks.

A more pessimistic view might assume that Milgram tried out as many variations as he could to find precisely those situations that generate a lot of attention. Maybe he even tried a variation and when he found the effect to persist, he would do one more extreme variation of that study and stop as soon as the effect disappears. His studies would have surely attracted less attention if the effect disappears in most of the studies, and only appears in a few. So was Milgram motivated to fully and systematically explore the boundaries of the effect? Or did he maybe do just enough variations to generate attention and ensure the effect seems stable enough to warrant attention? Possibly.


The Water We Swim In: Wallace’s Complete Parable

David Foster Wallace’s 2005 Kenyon commencement speech offers the perfect metaphor for situational blindness:

“Two young fish are swimming along and happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, ‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’ The two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, ‘What the hell is water?’”

Wallace’s point: An obvious reality is often difficult to see. We’re like those fish. Swimming in situations we don’t even notice.

This connects directly to social psychology’s fundamental insight: situations powerfully shape behavior, yet we systematically underestimate their influence, because in a very simple way ‘we can’t see them’. We see the people acting in them, but we even lack the vocabulary to quickly classify and categorise situations.

The Modern Extension: Wilson’s Construal Principle

Timothy Wilson (2022) argues that social psychology should acknowledge the core roles that construals play. He builds on Kurt Lewin’s equation (Lewin, 2022, p.875-876) and highlights that Lewin had always understood the situation to (at least also) feature subjective elements. This subjective perception of an understanding then is similar to Wilson’s (2022) idea of construals.

Two people in identical situations with similar personalities might behave completely differently based on their interpretation. A job interview might be construed as:

Each construal produces different behaviors from the same P in the same S.

Wilson argues this is what makes social psychology unique: it studies not just objective situations, but how people subjectively interpret them, and construals therefore play a key role.

Practical Integration Framework

Combining all elements for real-world application:

Step 1: Map the Person

Step 2: Analyze the Situation

Step 3: Check Construal

Step 4: Predict/Explain Behavior

Critical Perspectives and Limitations

Perry’s Critique of Milgram (2012)

Gina Perry’s research provides a critical perspective on Milgram’s research and suggests:

Yet replications find similar obedience rates, suggesting these results were not simply a function of Milgram-specific research practices.

Cultural Limitations

Most research comes from WEIRD populations (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic). Cross-cultural replications show varying results, suggesting culture itself is a situation that shapes the P-S interaction.

Complete References

💡 Can’t access these papers? Here’s how to get them legally (often free), and here’s why it costs $40 in the first place.

  1. Lewin, K. (1936). Principles of topological psychology. McGraw-Hill.
  2. Milgram, S. (1963). Behavioral study of obedience. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67(4), 371-378. DOI link
  3. Milgram, S. (1974). Obedience to authority: An experimental view. Harper & Row.
  4. Mischel, W. (1968). Personality and assessment. Wiley.
  5. Perry, G. (2012). Behind the shock machine: The untold story of the notorious Milgram psychology experiments. Scribe Publications.
  6. Roberts, B. W. (2009). Back to the future: Personality and assessment and personality development. Journal of Research in Personality, 43(2), 137-145. DOI link
  7. Roberts, B. W., & Yoon, H. J. (2022). Personality psychology. Annual Review of Psychology, 73(1), 489-516. DOI link
  8. Wallace, D. F. (2005). This is water. Kenyon College commencement speech. Wikipedia link
  9. Wilson, T. D. (2022). What is social psychology? The construal principle. Psychological Review, 129(4), 873-889. DOI link
  10. Henrich, Joseph, Steven J. Heine, and Ara Norenzayan. “The Weirdest People in the World?” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 33, no. 2–3 (2010): 61–83. DOI link.

The Quiet Power Playbook: For kind leaders who want promotions, not politics

More at kindandquiet.com

Martin Schweinsberg, Ph.D. (ESMT Berlin)

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