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| Herbert Kelman | |
|---|---|
| Name | Herbert Kelman |
| Birth date | May 5, 1927 |
| Birth place | Vienna, Austria |
| Death date | January 1, 2022 |
| Death place | Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States |
| Nationality | Austrian-born American |
| Occupation | Social psychologist, scholar, mediator |
| Alma mater | University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University |
| Known for | Work on social influence, attribution, conflict resolution, interactive problem solving |
Herbert Kelman was an Austrian-born American social psychologist whose research on Social psychology reshaped understanding of attitude change, persuasion, and international conflict mediation. He combined laboratory experiments with applied processes such as interactive problem solving and track two diplomacy to influence policy debates about the Vietnam War, Middle East conflict, and Cold War tensions. Kelman's interdisciplinary collaborations spanned institutions including Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the American Psychological Association.
Kelman was born in Vienna and emigrated to the United States fleeing Nazi Germany's annexation, joining a community of scholars from Central Europe who settled in American universities. He completed undergraduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania and pursued graduate work at Harvard University under advisors active in social psychology and personality psychology. During his formative years he encountered intellectual currents from figures such as Kurt Lewin, Leon Festinger, Solomon Asch, Muzafer Sherif, and Gordon Allport that influenced his empirical and theoretical orientation.
Kelman held faculty appointments at Harvard University and later at the University of Pennsylvania and Massachusetts Institute of Technology before returning to Harvard where he became a professor in the Department of Social Relations and later the Center for International Affairs. He served as president of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology and was active in the American Psychological Association governance. Kelman collaborated with scholars from the Kennedy School of Government, the School of Public Health, and research centers such as the RAND Corporation and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Kelman's experimental work advanced theories of attitude change by differentiating processes of compliance, identification, and internalization, elaborating on earlier ideas from Leon Festinger and Kurt Lewin. He developed models integrating social influence with attribution theory and drew on findings from Stanley Milgram's obedience studies and Solomon Asch's conformity experiments to explain when messages lead to persistent belief revision versus transient compliance. Kelman proposed mechanisms for interpersonal perception change in protracted conflicts, importing concepts from Erving Goffman, Thomas Schelling, and Graham Allison to design interactive problem solving sessions. His theoretical contributions informed work on peace psychology, conflict resolution, and the psychology of terrorism and nuclear deterrence.
Kelman's influential articles and chapters appeared in journals and edited volumes alongside scholars like Daniel Katz, Richard LaPiere, Herbert Simon, and Eliot Aronson. Notable works include empirical papers on social influence cited with research by Muzafer Sherif and Stanley Milgram, and policy-oriented essays published through Harvard University Press and essays for think tanks such as the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Brookings Institution. He authored and coauthored pieces on interactive problem solving with colleagues from Tel Aviv University, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, University of Jordan, and Princeton University. His bibliographic impact is recorded in collections and citations alongside scholars like Jerome Bruner, Noam Chomsky, John Rawls, and Samuel P. Huntington.
Kelman applied his scholarship to practical negotiation processes involving officials and intellectuals from Israel, the Palestinian Authority, Lebanon, and the Jordanian government, engaging in dialogues parallel to formal diplomacy such as those mediated by the United Nations and regional actors like the Arab League. He contributed to US policy discussions during the Vietnam War era and engaged with programs at the State Department, the Office of Strategic Services-era networks, and advisory bodies connected to the National Security Council. Kelman organized and participated in workshops with figures from Yugoslavia, Soviet Union dissident circles, and scholars of German reunification, interfacing with institutions like the Fulbright Program and the Council on Foreign Relations.
Kelman's contributions were recognized by awards from the American Psychological Association, the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and honors from academic bodies such as the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences-affiliated societies. He received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and grants from foundations including the Rockefeller Foundation and the Ford Foundation. Universities such as Harvard University, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and the University of Pennsylvania conferred honorary distinctions and visiting appointments.
Kelman married and raised a family in the Boston area while maintaining ties to intellectual communities in Vienna and Jerusalem. His legacy lives on in graduate training at institutions like Harvard, MIT, and the University of Pennsylvania, and in ongoing programs of track two diplomacy and peacebuilding taught at the Kennedy School of Government and practiced by alumni at organizations such as the International Crisis Group and Search for Common Ground. Scholars continuing his lines of work include researchers at Stanford University, Yale University, Columbia University, Oxford University, and University of California, Berkeley. He is remembered alongside twentieth-century thinkers such as Kurt Lewin, Leon Festinger, and Gordon Allport for bridging empirical social psychology and international practice.
Category:1927 births Category:2022 deaths Category:Social psychologists Category:Harvard University faculty Category:Austrian emigrants to the United States