Gestalt Psychology

fields of force

regions/space traversed by lines of force

Ernst Mach

-"The Analysis of Sensations" -more direct influence on Gestalt thinking -discussed spatial patterns and considered them to be sensations -these space-form and time-form sensations were independent of their individual elements -argued that our perception of an object doesn't change, even if we change our orientation to it

Gestalt vs Wundt psychology

-Gestalt accepted value of consciousness while criticizing the attempt to reduce it to atoms or elements -behavioral psychologists refused to acknowledge the usefulness of the concept of consciousness for a scientific psychology -Gestalt psychologists referred to Wundt's approach as "brick and mortar psychology" implying that the elements were held together by the mortar of the association process -Wundt maintained that when sensory elements are combined, the elements form a new pattern/configuration -Wundt noted the point that "the whole is different from the sum of its parts" in his doctrine of creative synthesis, but Gestalt psychologists made it the central point of their revolution

productive thinking in humans

-Wertheimer proposed: -thinking is done in terms of wholes -evidence to support that the whole problem must dominate the parts -organize problems into meaningful wholes

Immanuel Kant

-argued that when we perceive "objects", we encounter mental states that appear to be composed of bits and pieces -similar to sensory elements, except they are not organized through the mechanical process of association; instead, the mind in the process of perceiving will form or create a whole experience -thus, perception isn't a passive impression and combination of sensory elements, but an active organizing of elements into a coherent experience -in this way, the mind actively gives shape and form to the raw data of perception

reasons why Gestalt psychology spread slowly to the US

-behaviorism was at its peak of popularity -language barrier -many psychologists believed that it only dealt with perception -founders settled at small colleges that didn't have graduate programs; difficult to spread ideas -most important: American psychology had advances beyond the ideas of W and T, which Gestalt psychologists were opposing

Max Wertheimer

-developed idea of seeing motion when it didn't actually occur; "impression" of movement -phi phenomenon: illusion that two stationary lights move -presented principles of perceptual organization -helped found journal "Psychological Research" that became the official publication of the Gestalt psychology school of thought

isomorphism

-doctrine that there's a correspondence between psychological or conscious experience and the underlying brain experience -shifted focus to the brain mechanisms involved in perception -attempted to develop theory about underlying neurological correlates of perceived Gestalts -Wertheimer suggested that brain activity is a configural, whole process; apparent and actual motion are experienced identically, so the cortical processes for apparent and actual motion must be identical

Kurt Lewin

-field theory -the life space -motivation and the Zeigarnik effect -social psychology

contributions of Gestalt psychology

-influenced work on perception, learning, thinking, personality, social psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and motivation -unlike behaviorism, retained a separate identity; major tenets not absorbed into mainstream psychological thought; continued to foster interest in conscious experience as a legitimate problem for psychology during the years when behaviorism was dominant -focus on conscious experience centered on a modern version of phenomenology, which was more accepted by European psychologists

Kohler's research with chimps

-interpreted results in terms of the whole situation and the relationships among the stimuli -animals can't clearly envision the whole problem, so the chimps had to reconstruct the perceptual field to solve the problem -interpreted his studies as providing evidence of insight, the apparently spontaneous understanding of relationships

Gestalt psychologists battle with behaviorism

-it dealt with artificial abstractions; result was molecular, not molar, approach -disputed behaviorist's denial of the validity of introspection and their discarding of any recognition of consciousness -Koffka said it was senseless to develop a psychology without consciousness because that meant psychology would be restricted to little more than a collection of animal research studies

the Gestalt revolt

-its ideas contradicted much of the academic tradition of Gestalt psychology -in the US, behaviorism was less of an immediate revolt against Wundt psychology and against Titchener's structuralism because functionalism had already brought fundamental changes in American psychology; no such tempering effects paved the way for the Gestalt revolt in Germany -demanded a complete revision of the old order -perceptual constancies: a quality of wholeness in perceptual experience that doesn't vary even when the sensory elements change -perception is a whole, a Gestalt, and any attempt to analyze/reduce it into elements will destroy it

Gestalt psychology

-mainly focused on the elementistic nature of Wundt's work; opposed sensory elements -believed there's more to perception than meets the eye; our perception goes beyond sensory elements -maintained that when sensory elements are combined, the elements form a new pattern of configuration -basis of the Gestalt position is its focus on the wholeness of perception (Kant)

Kurt Koffka

-most inventive -worked with brain damaged and aphasic patients during war -after war, wrote article that introduced perception -caused misunderstanding that Gestalt psychology only dealt with perception and had no relevance for any other areas -Gestalt psychology was more broadly concerned with cognitive processes with problems or thinking, learning, and other areas of conscious experience

Wolfgang Kohler

-most prolific promoter; books became standard works of Gestalt psychology -his training in physics persuaded him that psychology must ally itself with physics and Gestalten occur in physics and psychology -spent seven years studying apes; "The Mentality of Apes" -published "Gestalt Psychology", a comprehensive account of the Gestalt movement

Franz Bertano

-opposed Wundt's focus on the elements of conscious experience -proposed that psychology study the act of experiencing -considered Wundt's introspection to be artificial and favored a less rigid and more direct observation of experience as it occurred

social psychology

-outstanding feature of his social psychology is group dynamics, the application of psychological concepts to individual and group behavior -at any given time, group behavior is a function of the total field situation -research initiated new areas of social research and spurred growth of social psychology -also emphasized social action research, the study of relevant social problems with a view to introducing changes in society

the life space

-overall orientation in psychology was toward the practical, focusing on social issues that affect how we live and work -a person's psychological activities occur within a kind of psychological field called the life space -it consists of a person's needs in interaction with the psychological environment -also shows varying degrees of development as a function of the amount and kind of experience we have accumulated -used a mathematical model to represent his theoretical conception of psychological processes; used topology to show at any given moment a person's possible goals and the paths leading to them -"blackboard psychology"

motivation and the Zeigarnik effect

-proposed basic state of balance between the person and the environment; any disturbance leads to tension, which leads to action to relieve it -thus, to explain human motivation, believed that behavior involves a cycle of tension-states of need-states followed by activity and relief -Zeigarnik effect: subjects remember uncompleted tasks better than completed ones

Christian von Ehrenfels

-proposed qualities of experience that can't be in explained as combinations of sensory elements -called them Gestalt qualitaten (form qualities): perceptions based on something greater than a merging of individual sensations -believed form itself was an element created by the mind operating on the sensory element. Thus, the mind was able to create form out of elementary sensations -phenomenology: based on the unbiased description of immediate experience just as it occurs and isn't reduced to elements. It involves the most naive experience of common sense rather than reported by a biased instructor

Gestalt psychology in Nazi Germany

-some disciples remained -research continued on studies in vision and depth perception -Kohler's psychological institute remained open in Berlin, but it was no longer characterized by openness of inquiry and academic freedom -research activities of most German psychologists during WWII were directed towards war effort, primarily the assessment of military personnel -practical and applied research took precedence over pure science and theory construction

criticisms of Gestalt psychology

-the organization of perceptual processes, as in the phi phenomenon, wasn't approached as a scientific problem to be investigated, but treated instead as a phenomenon whose existence was simply accepted -experimental psychologists thought it was vague and that the basic concepts weren't defined with enough rigor to be scientifically meaningful -its proponents were too occupied with theory at the expense of research and empirical data -inferior to behavior psychology research because it lacked adequate controls and its unquantified data weren't amenable to statistical analysis -Kohler's notion of insight: later studies suggested problem solving doesn't occur suddenly and may rely on prior learning/experience

field theory

-trend arose of thinking in terms of field relationships instead of with an atomistic/elementistic framework -field theory arose as a counterpart to the concept of force fields in physics -ideas of Lewin is Gestalt in orientation, but extends beyond the orthodox Gestalt position and uses the concept of fields of force to explain behavior in terms of human needs, personality, and social influences

problems caused by the word Gestalt

-unlike functionalism or behaviorism, it doesn't clearly denote what the movement stands for -has no precise English-language counterpart -Kohler noted that it had two uses in German; one denotes shape or form as a property of objects, the other denotes a whole or concrete entity that has one of its attributes a specific shape or form -term isn't restricted to the visual/sensory field; may encompass learning, thinking, emotions, and behavior

Gestalt principles of perceptual organization

1. proximity 2. continuity 3. similarity 4. closure 5. simplicity 6. figure/ground -Wertheimer asserted that we perceive objects like we do apparent motion: unified, not in clusters -one underlying premise: perceptual organization occurs instantly whenever we sense shapes or patterns; the discrete parts of the perceptual field connect, uniting to form structures distinct from their background -perceptual organization is spontaneous and inevitable whenever we look/listen -visual area of the brain doesn't respond separately to individual elements of visual input, connecting these elements by some mechanical process of association. Instead, elements that are similar/close together tend to combine, and those not similar/close together tend not to combine -focus more on peripheral factors of perceptual organization than the effects of learning/experience, but also noted that central factors within organization influence perception -don't depend on higher mental processes/past experiences, but are present in the stimuli themselves