The Gestaltists

What you see is not just parts!

The Oppositionists

• Grew as a reaction against voluntarism, structuralism and behaviorism– Early 1910’s and 20’s and Watsonian behaviorism

is hot– Still quite a bit of structuralism around, as well– Thought were missing something: how we put

together the whole– Emphasized NOT concentrating on parts

The Oppositionists• Kurt Wertheimer

– German– Phi phenomenon got him started

• Phi Phenomenon = apparent movement– Why interesting? Not easily explainable by examining the “parts”– Gestaltists: although psychological experiences result from sensory

elements, these experiences are different from the sensory elements themselves

– The phenomenological experience is different from the sum of the parts

• Gestaltists = Kantians– Organism adds something to experience that not contained in sensory data– That “something” = ORGANIZATION– Gestalt = configuratio or pattern

The Oppositionists

• Gestalists major point: behaviorists, structuralists, etc. all making same fatal error: attempting to divide up subject matter into elements

• Not reject introspectionist method, but rejected how deal with the data

• Phenomenologists: – Studies the meaningful, intact, mental events without

dividing them up for further analysis– Studies the phenomenon, not the parts– Are wholistic, molar, subjective, nativistic, and cognitive

Lewin’s Field Theory• Kurt Lewin (1890-1947)

– Theory of human motivation

• Human behavior determined by total number of psychological facts being experiences at that time– Psychological fact = anything which a person is conscious of– Life space = sum of all psychological facts

• Some psychological facts exert positive influence, some negative• Totality or sum of these facts that determine behavior

• Important: must be conscious to be psychological fact– Thus: memories must be conscious– Behavior is dynamic because facts are dynamic– The “field” is always changing, but the whole determines the behaviora

Field Theory

• Used Field Theory from physics to apply to psychology– Field = dynamic, interrelated system– Any part of this system influences every other part– Gestalten = small fields– Perceived environment can = a field– Person = dynamic, interrelated system– What happens to a person influences whole

person, not just one part

Nature versus Nurture

• Traditional behaviorists: – person is passive receiver of environment– Brain = switchboard processing experience

• Gestaltists gave more active role– Brain ACTS on incoming sensory information– Gives meaning and organization– Not learned, but innate– Is a physical system

Law of Pragnanz

• “psychological organization wil always be as gooda s the controlling circumstances allow”

• “good” = simple, complete, concise, symmetrical, harmonious

• Good figure, good perception, good memory = cannot be made more simple or organized through any perceptual shift

Gestalt Rules for Organization

• Gestalt = configuration

• Examine FIGURE versus GROUND– Figure = distinctive parts of array that you need to attend to– Ground = background

• Interested in how people determined figure vs. ground

• Total configuration critical: The WHOLE is GREATER than the SUM of its parts

Both of these figures have three elements. The figure on the left is called a __________; but the figure on the right is called a _____________.

Rules of Organization

• Proximity: things that are in proximity to one another belong together

• Similarity: things that are similar to one another are judges as belonging to that group

• Contrast: differences form edges or borders

Rules of Organization

• Good continuation: – Continuing a pattern makes sense– Otherwise, is a border or contrast– Number sequences, ordering and sets

• Closure:– Closure is a contrast or edge– Brings the figure to an end– Should be natural or we finish it!

AbcAbcAbcAbcAbcAbcAbcAb____

Don’t you hate it when people don’t finish their !

Rules of Organization

• Good Figure or Pragnanz– Nature is full of symmetry; we prefer symmetrical

shapes and forms– Nonsense figures are changed to make sense– We finish a figure to make a sensible figure vs. ground

• Common fate:– Using the gestalt rules of organization to “fix” the

figure– Make a sensible figure and ground

Perceptual Constancies

• Gestalt rules demonstrate perceptual constancies

• What we see depends on our experience and the situation

• What ground is the figure lying upon?

Perceptual Constancies

• When we get into an ambiguous situation:– We must alter our preconceived ideas– Use knowledge about the world + the information

about the present scene – Thus make sense of the visual image

• We assume that the world stays constant:– People, animals and things stay the same size, color,

shape– Thus, the relative brightness, color or shape is

determined by the intensity of the object RELATIVE to other objects in the scene

We must make judgments about the world

• One object in comparison to another– Which is bigger?– Which if brighter or redder or louder?

• Use relationships within the image to determine size, color, shape, etc.

Visual Illusions

• Ambiguous figures– No clear figure versus ground– Must make a judgment using clues within the

picture– Your own personal experience also plays a role

• Let’s see some examples

Penrose never ending staircase

Is the red dot inside or outside the box

Our abilities help us perceive some interesting phenomena:

• Perceived movement:– Must determine if YOU or the ground is moving– Feeling like your car is rolling backward when the

other car moves slightly forward at a stop light

• Flicker fusion: ability to see movies as a moving picture, not a bunch of quick little pictures

• Phi phenomenon: jumping of a light back and forth

Dynamic Qualities

• Gestalt rules apply to all our senses– Audition, somatosensory, thermoregulation– Why is it funny that “dry ice” burns?

• Cross modalities, as well: – Consistencies and expectations across senses– Someone should look like they sound!

Dynamic Qualities

Which of these is a Molumba and which is a Takete?

Dynamic Qualities

• Which is the cheerleader and which is the nerd?– Bertha – Jennifer

• Why is this important?– Names can influence how people think about you!– University of Chicago study: Traditional vs. African

American names on resumes

• Think Gestalt rules don’t influence your everyday behavior?

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The brain and conscious experience

• Gestaltist solution to mind body problem– Behaviorists: ignored– Structuralists and voluntarists: epiphenomenalism:

• Contencts of mind vary passively as function of sensory experience• Direct relation between body and ind

• Gestaltists: isomorphism between psychological experience and processes in brain– External stimulation causes reactions in brain– Experience those reactions as they occur in brain– Brain actively, not passively, transforms sensory stimulation

• Organizes and makes sense of info• Simplifies, completes, etc.• Brain does this before we are “aware” of it• In innate process

• Why important?– Activities of brain correspond dynamically with content of thought– Brain actively transforms incoming sensory information, and it is transformed information that we

are aware of!– Interestingly, neuroscience supports this idea

Subjective and objective reality• What determines behavior

– Not environment, because we don’t perceive or are aware of raw environment

– Must be consciousness or subjective reality– Geographical environment = objective or physical reality– Behavioral environment = psychological or subjective reality

• This has important implications– Gestalt rules alter our “reality”– So do values, beliefs, etc. – Each person has unique view of world– This view shapes how we interact (indeed, it shapes what we perceive)– Beliefs, then, have strong influence on behavior!

Critique

• Contributions:– Refuted both structuralism and simple behaviorism– Concepts of organization of physical/psychological experience– Rules of organization– Challenged rote learning models

• Criticisms– Never attained mainstream acceptance– Difficult model to test– In many ways, were right in terms of organizational rules and

idea of whole versus parts