Sensitivity training is a method of laboratory training where an unstructured group of individuals exchange thoughts and feelings on a face-to-face basis. Sensitivity training helps give insight into how and why others feel the way they do on issues of mutual concern. Training in small groups in which people develop a sensitive awareness and understanding of themselves and of their relationships with others. Sensitivity training is based on research on human behavior that came out of efforts during World War II to ascertain whether or not an enemy’s core beliefs and behavior could be modified by the application of certain psychological techniques. These techniques have been gradually perfected over the years by efforts of business and industry leaders to persuade people to buy products, including the radio and television industry to ascertain how an audience might be habituated to certain types of programming.
Kurt Lewin is credited with being the ‘father’ of sensitivity training in the United States. Laboratory Training began in 1946 when Kurt Lewin and his staff at the Research Center for Group Dynamics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology were training community leaders. A workshop was developed for the leaders to learn about leadership and to discuss problems. At the end of each day, the researchers discussed privately what behaviors and group dynamics they had observed. The leaders asked permission to sit in on these feedback sessions. Reluctant at first, the researchers finally agreed. Thus the first T-group was formed in which people reacted to information about their own behavior. Tavistock Clinic, an outgrowth of the Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology, founded in 1920 in London . initiated sensitivity training in the United Kingdom in 1932, under the headship of a psychiatrist John Rawlings Rees. Dr. Rees conducted tests on American and British soldiers to ascertain whether, under conditions of induced and controlled stress, groups could be made to behave erratically. In particular they wanted to know whether people would let go even firmly held beliefs under ‘peer pressure’ to conform to a predetermined set of ‘popular’ beliefs. This Tavistock method was similar to those procedures used in the mental hospitals’ to correct the attitudes of prisoners; where, it was called re-education. Sensitivity training evolved in the United States of America; at Stanford’s Research Institute’s Center for the Behavioral Sciences, at the Sloan School at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and at the various National Training Laboratories (NTLs), where concepts popularly known as ‘T-Groups’ (therapy groups) and ‘sensitivity training’ were developed.
A controlled stress situation is created by a group leader (‘facilitator’) with the ostensible goal of achieving a consensus or agreement which has, in reality, been predetermined. By using peer pressure in gradually increasing increments, up to and including yelling at, cursing at, and isolating the holdouts, weaker individuals were intimidated into caving in. They emerge with a new value structure in place, and the goal is achieved. The method was refined and later popularized by other schools of behavioral science, such as Ensalen Institute, the NTL Institute for Applied Behavioral Sciences, and the Western Training Laboratories in Group Development.” Sensitivity training is a type of experience-based learning in which participants work together in a small group over an extended period of time learning through analysis of their own experiences. The primary setting is the T Group (T for training) in which a staff member sets up an ambiguous situation which allows participants to choose the roles they will play while observing and reacting to the behavior of other members and in turn having an impact on them. The perceptions and reactions are the data for learning. T-Group theory emphasizes each participant’s responsibility for his own learning, the staff person’s role of facilitating examination and understanding, provision for detailed examination required to draw valid generalizations, creation of authentic interpersonal relationships which facilitate honest and direct communication, and the development of new skills in working with people.
Goals of sensitivity training are to allow participants to gain a picture of the impact that they make on others and to facilitate the study of group dynamics and of larger organizational concepts such as status, influence, division of labor, and styles of managing conflict. Some believe that sensitivity is talent, while others believed that sensitivity is something which is not so much developed, as allowed to exist. It is a trait called “empathy”. Sensitivity is found wanting in people as they are often preoccupied with their own problems that they don’t “have time” for others. Their tension disallows them to pay attention to someone or to relate to what the person is saying, Most believe that sensitivity to others could be developed. Some people have this ability, but most just fake it.
Sensitivity training involves a small group of individuals focusing on the here-and-now behavior and attitudes in the group. In short, the individuals discuss whatever comes up naturally in the group. For example, one participant might criticize an opinion expressed by another, and both the opinion and the criticism could become the focus of the entire group. The intent of this process, which might take several days at 12 hours or more per day, is for participants to learn how they affect others and how others affect them. In turn, “sensitivity” learning can help participants become more skilled in diagnosing interpersonal behavior and attitudes on the job.
A sensitivity training program requires 3 steps:
1)Unfreezing the old values: It requires that the trainees become aware of the inadequacy of the old values. This can be done when the trainee faces dilemma in which his old values are not able to provide proper guidance. The first step consists of a small procedure:
- An unstructured group of 10-15 people is formed.
- Without an objective, the group looks to the trainer for guidance. (A trained leader is generally present to help maintain a psychologically safe atmosphere in which participants feel free to express themselves and experiment with new ways of dealing with others.)
- But the trainer refuses to provide guidance or assume leadership
- Soon the trainees are motivated to resolve the uncertainty by themselves
- To this end, they try to form some hierarchy. Some try assume the leadership role which may or may not be liked by other trainees.
- Then, they start understanding what they wish to do and come up with alternative ways of dealing with the situation.
2) Development of new values: With the trainer’s support, trainees begin to examine their interpersonal behavior and give each other feedback. The reasoning of the feedback’s are discussed which motivates trainees to experiment with range of new behaviors and values. This process constitutes the second step in the change process of the development of these values.
3) Refreezing the new ones:This step depends upon how much opportunity the trainees get to practice their new behaviors and values at their work place.
Sensitivity could be enhanced by adopting the following view points:
- Everybody is entitled to their feelings, no matter how illogical they are;
- There is no such thing as ‘blame’… Everybody involved is equally at fault;
- A person should not attack, but express their feelings about others’ actions;
- Leaving a problem unresolved will make it worse with time;
- Nobody is perfect which includes one self.
Encounter Groups were nontraditional attempts at psychotherapy that offered short-term treatment for members without serious psychiatric problems. These groups were also known as sensitivity (or sensory) awareness groups and training groups (or T-groups). Encounter groups were an outgrowth of studies conducted at the National Training Laboratories in by Kurt Lewin. The use of continual feedback, participation, and observation by the group encouraged the analysis and interpretation of their problems. Other methods for the group dynamics included Gestalt therapy (working with one person at a time with a primary goal of increasing awareness of oneself in the moment, also known as holistic therapy) and meditation. Encounter groups were popularized by people such as Dr. Fritz Perls and Dr. Will Schutz (of the Esalen Institute) and had their greatest impact on the general population in the 1960s and 1970s. These groups fell out of favor with the psychiatric community because of criticism that many of the group leaders at the time were not trained in traditional group therapy and that the groups could sometimes cause great harm to people with serious emotional problems.