Chapter 10: Gestalt Psychology and the Social Field

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Chapter 10 Gestalt Psychology and the Social
Field

• A History of Psychology
• (3rd Edition)
• John G. Benjafield

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Gestalt

• Concept introduced by Goethe
• Gestalt psychologists there are many important
  phenomena whose characteristic properties cannot
  be reduced to the sum of their parts

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Max Wertheimer (18801943)

• 1904 doctoral dissertation at the University of
  Würzburg
• Use of word association method for the detection
  of complexes
• University of Frankfurt
• Phi Phenomenon

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Phi Phenomenon

• Two lights, turned on alternately by a switch
• Each light casts a different shadow on the screen
  but the participant sees one shadow moving back
  and forth
• Apparent motion not a result of inference

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The Minimum Principle

• Minimum principle we tend to organize our
  experience so that it is as simple as possible
• Ex. Phi phenomenon

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Precursors of Gestalt Psychology

• Christian von Ehrenfels (18591932)
• Suggested that experiences should be understood
  as composed of individual sensations a Gestalt
  quality that provided the form of the experience
• Kant
• Argued that our experience was a construction we
  impose cause-and-effect relationships on the
  world
• Phenomenology

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Laws of Perceptual Organization

• Intended to describe the basic ways in which we
  organize our experience as simply as possible
• Examples
• Proximity we tend to group things together that
  are close in space
• Closure we tend to make our experience as
  complete as possible

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Productive Thinking

• Improper teaching methods lead to rote
  memorization and poor transfer between situations
• Good teaching methods lead to deeper
  understanding of the structure of a problem

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Wolfgang Köhler (18871967)

• Trained in physics
• 1920 Acting director of the Psychological
  Institute of the University of Berlin
• Resigned in 1933 after decree that professors
  must open their lectures with the Nazi salute

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The Mentality of Apes

• Marooned on Tenerife, in the Canary Islands,
  during WWI
• Studied chimpanzees on the island
• Insight the ability to understand how the
  different parts of a situation are related to one
  another

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The Concept of Isomorphism

• Isomorphism a novel approach to the relation
  between experience and the brain
• A variant of psychophysical parallelism
• Correspondence between events in the brain and
  events in the mind is structural
• Ex. studies using a Necker cube

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Kurt Koffka (18861941)

• Studied for one year at the University of
  Edinburgh
• Made connections with English-speaking people
• Laid foundation for his international recognition
• Completed his studies at the University of Berlin

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Principles of Gestalt Psychology

• Published in 1935
• The Bible of Gestalt psychology
• Geographic environment the environment as it
  actually is
• Behavioural environment the environment that
  actually determines our behaviour
• Contains a persons phenomenal world of lived
  experience

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Why do things look as they do?

• Distal stimuli things as they exist in the
  geographic environment
• Proximal stimuli the effects that distal stimuli
  have on the surface of a receptor organ
• Perceptual constancies our perception of the
  properties of objects remains the same even
  though the proximal stimulus may change

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The Growth of the Mind

• Koffka presented a Gestalt approach to child
  psychology
• Childrens earliest experiences are figureground
  relationships
• Infants do not have to learn the emotional
  meaning of their perceptions
• Percepts have physiognomic properties

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Kurt Lewin (18901947)

• 1910 University of Berlin
• PhD Psychological Institute
• Influenced by the Gestalt psychologists
• Influenced by Ernst Cassirer
• Believed that people represent their experience
  by means of symbolic forms
• 19331935 worked at Cornell University
• 19351944 worked at University of Iowa
• 1944 director of the Research Center for Group
  Dynamics at MIT

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Field Theory

• Field all the forces acting on an individual at
  a particular time
• Life space the psychological field we are
  interested in B f (P,E)
• B behaviour of an individual at a certain
  moment
• P person
• E environment

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The Zeigarnik Effect

• Bluma Zeigarnik
• Student of Lewin
• Asked What is the relation between the status
  in memory of an activity which has been
  interrupted before it could be completed and of
  one which has not been interrupted?
• Zeigarnik effect tension created within a region
  of the person will tend to persist and cause us
  to remember unfinished business

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Group Dynamics

• Action research a program of research designed
  to gather data and lead to social change
• Studies in group dynamics
• Change in the dynamics of a group will change the
  way an individual perceives and acts
• Ex. sensitivity training experiments

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Fritz Heider (18961988)

• How do people achieve balanced states in their
  relations with others?
• Balanced vs. unbalanced states represented by
  series of p-o-x triads
• P person
• O another person
• X thing

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Leon Festinger (19191989)

• Graduate degree at State University of Iowa
• Worked with Lewin
• 1945 joined Lewin at MIT
• 1968 New School for Social Research, New York
  City

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Cognitive Dissonance

• Experiment
• Participants spent one hour doing boring tasks
• Asked to tell the next participant (a
  confederate) that the tasks had been really
  interesting
• One group offered 1 for lying other 20
• Participants who received 1 rated the experiment
  more interesting than those who received 20
• Explained by dissonance reduction

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Solomon Asch (19071996)

• Graduate work at Columbia
• Studied under Woodworth
• Drawn to Gestalt psychology
• Met Wertheimer and went to Swarthmore College
• (unofficial headquarters of Gestalt psychology)
• Became founding director of the Institute for
  Cognitive Studies at Rutgers

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Conformity

• Experiment
• Groups of 79 men (all but 1 were confederates)
• Groups presented with series of line judgment
  tasks
• Confederates made incorrect judgments
• Results participants conformed to the
  confederates in 37 per cent of trials

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Stanley Milgram (19331984)

• 19551956 TA and RA for Asch at Harvard
• 19591970 worked for Asch at the Institute for
  Advanced Study in Princeton
• Based his doctoral dissertation on Aschs
  conformity research

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Studies of Obedience

• 19611962 Experiments at Yale University
• Participants to give a test to another person
  (confederate)
• Participants to deliver electric shock to this
  person whenever they produced a wrong response
• Increasingly strong shocks with each wrong answer
• Results 26 of 40 participants delivered shocks
  until the end of the scale

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The Small World Phenomenon

• What is the probability that any two people,
  selected at random, will know each other?
• Small world technique research
• Results Six degrees of separation

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Kurt Goldstein (18781965)

• Physician
• Founding editor of Psychologische Forschung
• Private practice, affiliated with Columbia
  University
• Close friend of Lashleys

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Organismic Theory

• Rehabilitation of brain-damaged WWI soldiers
• Believed associationist psychology a barrier to
  understanding these individuals
• Self-actualization only drive that regulated
  behaviour
• Organismic approach the investigator should not
  evaluate behaviour mechanically (via a set
  formula)

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The Abstract Attitude

• Abstract attitude individual can only respond to
  concrete properties of their current situation
• Increased susceptibility to anxiety