chapter 14 - gestalt psychology

Question 1

what are the major socio-cultural factors that led to and then influenced the unfolding of Gestalt psychology?

Answer 1

• early 20th century, behaviorists were rebelling against structuralism and functionalism in the United States
• advances in physics and Eastern religion, existential phenomenology, psychoanalysis, experimental theatre, systems theory, and field theory
• was a reaction to Wundt’s elementism

Question 1

how is gestalt both an extension of and departure from the german physiological zeitgeist?

Answer 1

• the German zeitgeist and Gestalt both believe in top-down processing and an active mind
• Gestalt is more a holistic approach; the whole perception is more important than the sensations
• Germans were reductionists; sensation gives perception

Question 2

where does gestalt psychology sit in the context of the various philosophical (empiricism/rationalism) and scientific (behaviorism, physics, functionalism) approaches we have discussed?

Answer 2

Philosophical:
- Gestalt claims that the whole is grater than the sum of its parts and is anti-reductionistic, similar to rationalism
- stemmed from voluntarism; voluntarism is concerned with German rationalism and prioritizes processes that gives elements of thought forms, qualities, or values not found in either the external situation or the elemental events themselves
Scientific:
- shares the sensation and perception sentiment from German philosophy, carries on the workable reality
- pushes back against structuralism
- ties back to romanticism and existentialism because Gestaltists wanted to preserve the meaning of conscious experience
- takes from field theory, which is systems-level (as opposed to the reductionist Newtonian physics); to understand the mind, you must understand the field that the mind is in

Question 3

wertheimer and other gestalt psychologists were influenced by einstein and other physicists. how do the gestalt principles of organization exemplify this influence?

Answer 3

• field theory from physics at the time showed how fields like magnetism would organize elements like iron filings
• the brain in a top-down fashion organizes incoming sensory data into meaningful wholes (figure-ground, closure, continuity, proximity, similarity, linear perspective, size constancy, color constancy)

Question 4

how do the findings of Gestalt Psychology inform our understanding of subjective (experience mentally) and objective (present physically) reality?

Answer 4

• Koffka said the geographical environment was the physical environment and the behavioral environment was our subjective interpretation of the geographical environment
• Our own subjective reality governs our actions more than the physical environment does
• Gestalt psychology argues we do not experience things in isolated pieces, but in meaningful, intact configurations (distinct difference between sensation and perception)
• What we are conscious of and what we do is a direct product of the brain, not the physical world, because our brains act on sensory information and arranges it into good configurations
• The context of a unit contributes to how it is understood and experienced (holistic, dynamic, subjective terms)

Question 5

How does Kohler’s work connect to Tolman and Behaviorism more broadly?

Answer 5

• Tolman was influenced by Gestalt psychology, taking the phenomenological approach while studying behavior, concentrating on purposive behavior
• Kohler did a lot of work on learning and found that animals appeared to weigh the given situation; Tolman saw this as cognitive trial and error
• Kohler demonstrated that chimps had creative problem-solving skills by putting them in a room with food that was hard to grab; similar to Thorndike’s cats in the puzzle box
• Tolman’s study proved that rats do have a mental map, cognitions do matter, and that they have intentionality to some extent; Kohler’s bamboo experiment demonstrated this same thing, saying that building sticks to solve a problem is not something that you accidentally stumble upon

Question 6

how would the gestalt psychologists describe the causes of human behavior and thought?

Answer 6

• the brain is a dynamic configuration of forces that transforms sensory information
• the incoming sensory data interacts with force fields within the brain, causes fields of mental activity
• anti-reductionistic, top-down, active mind