gestalt psychology

Gestalt Psychology
• This was the major alternative and challenge
to structuralism during the early 20th century.

• Gestalt means “shape” or “form.”

• Major proponents:
– Max Wertheimer – developed Gestalt principles
– Kurt Koffka – developed laws of perception
– Wolfgang Kohler – worked with apes on insight
– Kurt Lewin – developed “Field theory”
 Conceptual Foundations
• Gestalt Psychology grew out of the perceptual theories
of physicist Ernst Mach and the experimental work of
Christian von Ehrenfels.
• Mach described properties of spatial and auditory
forms (squares, circles, simple melodies).
– As perceptual wholes these forms have qualities that
distinguish them from their elements (parts).
– Its form quality gives an object perceptual or psychological
permanence despite changes in sensation
– A song sung by different voices remains the same song.
 Max Wertheimer (1880-1943)
• Wertheimer studied under Stumpf in Berlin, then
Kulpe in Prague (psychology of legal testimony).
• Fascinated by the apparent motion of objects
outside a train window, he bought a stroboscope
to study “where does movement come from?”
– Schumann loaned him a tachistoscope and introduced
him to Koffka and Kohler (students of Stumpf).
• Apparent motion of a white stripe from
horizontal to vertical was demonstrated.
 Phi Phenomenon Demos
• http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/mot_reverse-
phi/index.html
• http://www.lifesci.sussex.ac.uk/home/George
_Mather/TwoStrokeFlash.htm

Early stroboscopic
entertainment devices
 Four Principles of Gestalt Thinking
• Holistic thinking – the whole is always more than
the sum of its parts, called supersummativity.
• Phenomenological basis – analyzing the essence
of phenomena is the subject matter of
psychology.
• Methodology – lifelike experiments using small
numbers of subjects.
• Isomorphism – psychological processes are
directly related to biological (brain) processes.
 Tactile Phi Perceptions
• Benussi showed that when two points on the skin
are stimulated the stimulus appears to move in
an arc through space, like a flea hopping.
• Von Bekesy produced a tactile phi perception of a
vibration jumping from knee to knee or between.
• Geldard & Sherrick produced a progression of
jumps up the arm from wrist to elbow (like a
rabbit).
• In all of these, the perceptual experience had a
property (movement) not present in the
components.
 Rubin’s Vase
• The figure emerges as a whole, not piecemeal,
demonstrating that perceptions are active,
lively and organized, not passive receivers of
stimuli.
 Gestalt Principles of Perception

proximity similarity

good closure
continuation
(good gestalt)
Good Gestalts

Poor performance on perceptual closure tests (right)

has been associated with right hemisphere impairment.
 Generality of Gestalt Principles
• Closure applies to memory, not just visual stimuli.
– Waiters can remember checks until the bill is paid.
– Zeigarnik Effect -- she gave 18-22 tasks but interrupted
half part-way through. Later, interrupted tasks were
90% more likely to be recalled.
– TV cliff-hanger episodes generate tension.
• Alpha the chimp filled in the missing wedge of a
pie-shaped figure.
– Results with other chimps produced inconsistent
results, perhaps because they were too young.
 Illusions and the Physical World
• Koffka distinguished between the geographic
environment and the behavioral environment.
– The man in the snowstorm who crossed a lake not
a plain without knowing it. His behavioral
environment was plain, not lake.

In both cases, the

horizontal line seems
shorter than the vertical
one, yet they are the
same lengths.
 Ascendancy of Gestalt Psychology
• Despite the turmoil in Germany after WWI,
Gestalt Psychology flourished in the 1920’s.
• Wolfgang Kohler succeeded Carl Stumpf as
director of the Berlin Psychological Institute.
– A decade later, the Nazi’s wrecked it.
– In 1933, Jewish professors, including Wertheimer,
Kohler & Koffka, were expelled from the university (27
psychologists).
– Many were assisted in finding jobs in the USA, some at
the NYC New School for Social Research (Univ. in
Exile).
 The University in Exile
• Wertheimer studied human thought and
education at the New School for Social Research
(1933).
– Fromm’s interviews with major scientists at the New
School was lost until republished in 1997.
• Wertheimer wrote “Productive Thinking” (1945)
recommending a Gestalt approach to teaching.
• He developed new methods of teaching math
and thought insightful productive thinking could
be cultivated in all children.
 Wolfgang Kohler (1887-1967)
• Kohler studied with Stumpf, then went to the
Canary Islands (Tenerife) to study primates and
was stranded there for 7 years by WWI.
• Kohler questioned the S-R learning approach of
Thorndike (trial & error), arguing that animals are
capable of reasoning in the right context.
– He said animals were unable to demonstrate higher
level reasoning in puzzle boxes.
– He devised situations that animals could
solve using insight.
 Barrier Problems (Umwegen)
G Dogs and one-year-old
children could do this task
Barrier easily but chickens could not.
S

House Wall
 Experiments with Chimps
• Chimps seemed to use insight to solve more
complicated problems involving combining tools
or using objects to reach bananas, with transfer.
– They seemed to have moments of insight, jumping up
with inspiration after giving up on a problem.
– Animals were tested in social situations where they
learned by observation and imitation.
– Kohler reported his results descriptively without
numbers and statistical interpretations.
• British intelligence thought he was a spy.
 Transposition

I II
In both
tasks the
chicken
pecks the
square on
Predicted by Predicted by the right.
II III
S-R theory Gestalt theory

Are chickens recognizing a particular gray stimulus or are they

making a comparative judgment?
 Other Studies
• Apes were able to find buried food
immediately but not after a delay – ape
memory is limited.
• He demonstrated that fear is not a learned
response by showing that apes reacted with
fear to novel stimuli such as camels or masks
not paired with punishment. Sample devil masks
used in Sri Lankan
dancing (Ceylon) where
the Cingalese people
live.
 Kurt Lewin (1890-1947)
• Lewin studied in Berlin under Stumpf but found
Wundtian psychology irrelevant and dull.
– He organized a series of workers classes to teach basic
skills -- considered subversive by the university.
• He volunteered for WWI winning an Iron Cross,
then published “The War Landscape” describing
the soldier’s experience of the war.
– He used terms like life space, boundary, direction and
zone, which became important in his later topological
theory & described depersonalization of the enemy.
Kurt Lewin
 Applied Interests
• Returning to the Berlin Psychological Institute, he
found Gestalt psychology interesting but had a
more applied focus.
– Two papers on the laborer in agriculture and industry.
– In 1919 he returned to the idea of life space,
comparing agricultural and industrial spaces.
– He criticized the time-and-motion studies of Frederick
Winslow Taylor (Principles of Scientific Management),
arguing work has life value and must be humanized.
– He inspired Zeigarnik’s research on waiter’s recall.
 Topological Psychology
• An individual is a complex energy field, a dynamic
system of needs and tensions directing behavior:
B  f ( P, E )
where behavior (B) is a function f of a person (P)
interacting with an environment (E).
• Each person moves in a life space that contains
goals with positive or negative valence.
– Goals create vectors that attract or repel.
• He used non-quantitative geometry to represent
this
 Lewin’s Eggs (Potatoes)

Nonpsychological E (P) E Nonpsychological

Lewin used diagrams like this to describe life spaces

 Studies of Child Behavior
• Lewin criticized statistical approaches to child
behavior and conceptions of “the average child.”
– The totality of a child’s life must be studied and since
each life space is different, using intensive case study.
• An infant’s life space is small and undifferentiated
but grows larger and more differentiated with
age.
• Lewin conducted detour studies similar to Kohler
but used topology to explain the results.
• “Environmental Forces in Child Behavior &
Development.”
 Detour Studies
Chocolate

Barrier This task is difficult for a

young child because the
child must move in a
C direction opposite to the
vector to obtain the
chocolate.

picnic play with

C
friends

This choice is easy because both

options are positive
 Conflict Diagrams

The child wants to climb the tree

Tree but is frightened creating an
C
± approach/avoidance conflict –
vectors wax and wane.

Task the child

doesn’t want to do
Here the conflict between
two undesirable events
results in deflection R
C
sideways to a third vector
R – escape from the field.
Punishment
 Lewin in the USA
• Lewin left Germany because of Hitler & anti-
semitism at the Univ. of Berlin.
– Ogden (Kulpe’s student) got him a 2-yr job at Cornell
in home economics studying eating habits of children.
• Lewin tried for an appointment at Hebrew Univ.
studying displacement of Jews but Freud
opposed it
• He was appointed at the Univ. of Iowa’s Children
Welfare Research Station under a grant from the
Rockefeller Foundation.
 Research at Univ. of Iowa
• People reach for the pie at the back of the
counter.
– The amount of effort expended strengthens the
valence of a goal – goals become more attractive with
effort.
• Under conditions of frustration, children’s
behavior becomes dedifferentiated (regresses to
an early stage).
• Authoritarian vs democratic leadership styles
have a strong influence on children’s behavior.
– Authoritarian styles lead to more child aggression.
 Lewin’s Applied Research
• In this too, he stressed democracy over
autocracy.
• Lewin used “action research” – reflective team
problem solving -- to diagnose productivity
problems in Harwood Manufacturing.
– Workers felt productivity goals were unachievable.
– When allowed to set their own goals and solve their
own productivity problems, in improved considerably.
• Lewin used this approach in his own lab, stating
that he could not think productively as an
individual.
 War Efforts
• With Margaret Mead, he showed that group
discussions led to more behavior change (eating
visceral meats) than facts her in dynamic lectures.
– He also worked on propaganda, leadership, military
morale, and rehabilitation issues.
– William Wyler’s “The Best Years of Our Lives”
– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tU0d3DVcKoY&NR=1
• To better carry out his activities he founded the
Research Center for Group Dynamics at MIT.
 Four Major Programs of Research
• Ways to increase group productivity and counter
the tendency of groups to stray from their goals.
• Studies of communication and the spread of
rumors.
• Areas of social perception and interpersonal
relations, group membership and individual
adjustment.
• Studies in leadership training, leading to the
formation of T groups (training groups) designed
to open communication and combat prejudice.
 Programs to Combat Prejudice
• Founded the Commission on Community Interrelations
(CCI) for the American Jewish Congress to conduct
studies of discrimination.
– Interviews with customers of black or white clerks showed
no effect of race on sales.
– This finding was publicized to combat job discrimination
• Interviews with people in integrated vs segregated
housing projects showed greater pride & community,
less suspicion & hostility in the integrated projects.
– Most positive results were for 70% black occupancy.
 Other Studies
• Lewin had found that you can change attitudes by
changing behavior, so he encouraged the AJC to
challenge the college admissions quota system.
• A study of Ways of Handling a Bigot found that in
playlets enacting bigotry, 80% of the audience
wanted to see the bigot challenged, but calmly.
• Lewin died in 1947 of a heart attack, but his work
continued at his institutes.
– Those more interested in applied research split off
and moved to the University of Michigan.
 Gestalt Therapy
• Gestalt therapy is not really derived from Gestalt
psychology.
– Although it borrowed some terms like closure and
insight (defining them differently), it is recognized to
have little to do with Gestalt psychology.
– Perls admitted never reading the books of the Gestalt
psychologists but dedicated a book to Wertheimer.
– Henle: “The most grotesque misunderstanding of
Gestalt psychology is the notion that it has some
relation to Gestalt therapy…there is nothing in
common