Coleman on Deutsch's Grand Theory of Personality and Environment | Teachers College Columbia University

Skip to content Skip to main navigation

Coleman on Deutsch’s Grand Theory of Personality and Environment

The late Morton Deutsch, the TC psychologist who helped found the field of conflict resolution.
The late Morton Deutsch, the TC psychologist who helped found the field of conflict resolution.
Nature or nurture? It's one of the oldest arguments in social science. As Peter Coleman describes in the latest of his ongoing series of blogs on the contributions of Morton Deutsch, the late TC psychologist saw much of life as an interaction between the two. In 1982, Deutsch published his theory of psychological orientation and social relations, which articulated how social dimensions interact with aspects of individuals to ultimately influence behavior. Deutsch theorized that the four dimensions of social relations, when combined in situations, create distinctive types of relations and that these types of social relations induce particular types of psychological orientations in people. 

Check out The Five Percent, Coleman's blog on the Psychology Today website for past entries on Deutsch's work.

Published Friday, Sep 15, 2017