Gestalt Psychology Comprehensive Notes

Gestalt Psychology

  • Gestalt psychology examines intact whole behavior or cognitive experience.
  • "Gestalt" is German for "whole," so this is essentially "whole psychology."
  • Key figures: Max Wertheimer, Kurt Kafka, and Wolfgang Kohler.

Kohler Quote (1959)

  • Expressed excitement about discovering new psychological facts and relief from the constricting views of traditional psychology.
  • Criticized the notion that psychological facts consist of unrelated atoms combined only by associations of contiguity.
  • Found this picture senseless, implying human life is colorful and dynamic rather than a "frightful boar."
  • Expressed hope that further discoveries would dismantle the old, reductionist view.

Gestalt vs. Behaviorism

  • Gestalt psychologists opposed both Wundt's psychology and behaviorism, but for different reasons.
  • They accepted the study of conscious experience but rejected breaking it into piecemeal sections.
  • Advocated studying the entirety of conscious experience.
  • Emphasized studying molar behavior (the whole) rather than molecular behavior (breaking things down).

Historical Context

  • Popular in Germany by the mid-1920s.
  • Shifted to the U.S. around 1933 due to the rise of the Nazis.
  • Initial reception in the U.S. was slow because American psychology had already moved past Wundt and was embracing behaviorism.
  • Behaviorism was nearing its peak, aligning with the prevailing zeitgeist.
  • The focus on conscious/cognitive experience contrasted with the behaviorist viewpoint.
  • The language barrier (German) hindered broader acceptance.
  • The leaders of the field were at small colleges, limiting the dissemination of their ideas.
  • Some perceived the focus as being only on perception.

Max Wertheimer (1880-1943)

  • Born April 15.
  • Studied law but became interested in philosophy and psychology.
  • Attended classes of Stumpf and earned a doctorate under Külpe.
  • Stripped of his professorship by the Nazis and fled to New York City in 1933.
  • Gestalt psychology grew out of his research starting around 1910.
  • Influenced Abraham Maslow, who based the concept of self-actualization on Wertheimer's ideas.
  • Discovered the phi phenomenon.

Phi Phenomenon

  • Described in "Experimental Studies of the Perception of Movement" (1912).
  • The illusion of movement created by two flashing lights.
  • Example: Christmas lights appearing to run down a house when they are simply turning on and off sequentially.
  • Apparent movement does not need explaining; it exists as it is perceived and cannot be reduced to simpler elements.
  • Established that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

The whole is greater than the sum of the parts

  • An example to explain the phenomenon.
  • Shown: Blue light flashes on and off on the left, then a red light flashes on and off on the bottom on the right.
  • Reported: The illusion of movement from top to bottom, even though there are no lights flashing in between.
  • A bicycle is more than just the sum of its parts.
  • Need to look at more of a whole perspective to be able to understand what's going on.

Kurt Koffka (1886-1941)

  • Worked with Stumpf and Wertheimer.
  • Considered one of the co-founders of Gestalt psychology.
  • First gestalt psychologist to come to the U.S. (1924; Wertheimer came in 1933).
  • Wrote "Perception: An Introduction to Gestalt Theory" (1922) to present gestalt psychology to the U.S.
  • This article may have led to some misunderstanding, with some thinking gestalt psychology focused solely on perception.

Wolfgang Köhler (1887-1967)

  • Studied under Stumpf and Wertheimer with a background in physics.
  • Also a co-founder of Gestalt psychology.
  • Studied learning in chimpanzees, particularly in the Canary Islands.
  • Some suspected him of being a German spy.

Research With Chimps

  • Put food outside the chimpanzees' reach and provided them with objects to reach it.
  • Example: Chimps combined two short reeds to reach bananas.
  • Kohler called this "insightful learning."
  • The animal surveys the situation and discovers a solution.
  • Learning is not based solely on stimulus-response relationships.
  • Insightful learning happens internally.

Insightful Learning Examples

  • Sahara Problem: A dead man lying face down in the desert with no tracks nearby. The pack on his back contains an unopened parachute. The answer is that the man jumped from a plane.
  • Matchstick Triangle Problem: Construct four equilateral triangles with six matches by creating a three-dimensional tetrahedron.
  • Insight problems often involve an "aha" moment and a sudden realization of the answer.

Problems with Older Ways of Thinking

  • Bundle Hypothesis: Sensory features are bound together during conscious experience.
    • Objects of consciousness are made up of definite and unchanging elements.
    • Rather than seeing 327 brightnesses and nuances of color, we see a sky, house, and trees.
  • Psychophysical Isomorphism: Patterns of activity in the brain cause mental experience and not the sensory information.
    • Patterns of activity in the brain are equivalent patterns of conscious experience.
    • The brain transforms incoming sensory information, and we experience the transformed information.
    • We experience what our brain imposes structure on, leading us to see a tree instead of a collection of colors and shapes.
  • Constancy Hypothesis: There is a strict one-to-one correspondence between physical stimuli and sensations.
    • The same stimulation will always result in the same sensation regardless of circumstances.
    • Gestalt psychologists argued against this hypothesis.
    • The sensation a stimulus elicits is relative to existing patterns of activity in the brain and to the totality of stimulating conditions.

Law of Prägnanz

  • "Pragnanz" refers to the essence or ultimate meaning of an experience.
  • Mental events will always tend to be organized, simple, and regular due to the tendencies of the force fields in the brain.
  • Cognitive experience will always reflect the essence of one's experience instead of its disorganized, fragmented aspects.
  • This relates to psychophysical isomorphism, where we are automatically applying meaning to incoming information.

Perceptual Constancy

  • Indicates that cognitive experience is organized, not disorganized like incoming sensory input.
  • It is our tendency to simplify and make symmetrical and regular.
    • Size constancy: An object's size is perceived as the same despite changes in the size of its retinal image.
    • Shape constancy: An object's shape is perceived as stable despite changes in the shape projected on the retina.
    • Color constancy: The ability to recognize that colors are constant even though the amount of light or shadow on them changes.
    • Object constancy: An object remains the same even when the sensory information about it has changed, incorporating size, shape, and color constancy.

Top-Down vs. Bottom-Up Processing

  • Gestalt psychology emphasizes top-down processing.
    • Top-down processing: Emphasizes the influence of concepts, expectations, and memory.
    • Bottom-up processing: Emphasizes the importance of information from stimuli registered on our sensory receptors.
  • Examples:
    • Reading "The Cat" even when the 'a' and 'h' are identical.
    • Interpreting an ambiguous figure as either a '13' or a 'B' based on the surrounding context.

Gestalt Principles of Perceptual Organization

  • Also called "Gestaltin," these principles involve isolated configurations in which visual information is arranged.
  • More than 100 have been established.
    • Figure-ground: Dividing the perceptual field into what is being attended to (figure) and the background (ground).
    • Continuity: Experiencing stimuli that follow a predictable pattern as a perceptual unit.
    • Closure: The tendency to perceive incomplete objects as complete.
    • Proximity: The tendency to perceptually group together stimuli that are physically close.
    • Similarity: The tendency to perceive units of information or stimuli that are physically similar to one another.

Kurt Lewin (1890-1947)

  • Earned his doctorate with Stumpf and worked with Wertheimer, Kafka, and Köhler.
  • Considered an early follower of Gestalt psychology.
  • Came to the U.S. during the 1930s.
  • Important theoretical concept: life space.
    • A person's life space consists of all the influences acting on them at a given time, called psychological facts.
    • These influences include internal events (hunger, headache), external events (noise, stop signs), and recollections of prior experiences.
  • Principle of contemporaneity: Only those facts currently present in the life space can influence a person's thinking and behavior.
  • Lewin investigated conflict experimentally.

Types of Conflict

  • Approach-approach conflict: A person is attracted to two possibilities at the same time (e.g., two equally appealing restaurants).
  • Avoidance-avoidance conflict: A person is repelled by two unattractive goals at the same time (e.g., not wanting to get a job but not wanting to have no money).
  • Approach-avoidance conflict: Mixed feelings about one goal (e.g., wanting to buy a house but not wanting to spend the money).

Impact of Gestalt Psychology

  • Criticisms: Concepts are too vague and difficult to study experimentally.
  • Attacked by behaviorists for including consciousness in their studies.
  • Helped revamp psychology as a whole.
  • Influential particularly on sensation, perception, and cognitive psychology. It enriched psychology greatly and did much to counter the attractions of extreme behaviorism.
  • Became integrated into the mainstream of American psychology and doesn't stand on its own anymore.