Gestalt psychologists were experimentalists. They tried to test their stands in laboratories. Consequently, they advised many novel and suggestive experiments. They approached old and new problems from new angles.
The study of the whole:
Other psychologists have studied the problem of facial expression and of character analytically. They took each feature separately, studied the different positions it takes and thereby sought to discover what is expressed by each.
The Gestalt psychologist asserted that the face must be studied as a whole, and that parts should be considered only in relation with the whole, because the shape of the face resides in the face as a whole and not in its part
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Personality as an organized whole:
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The Gestalt psychologist further urges that one cannot get a true picture of a person’s character by listing the various personality traits because he fails to distinguish between the normal, central and dominating traits in the individual’s personality.
The personality is an organized whole, a Gestalt and not a mere sum of various traits. All parts of the organism are interrelated through the circulation and through the nervous system. The organism behaves as a complex unit. Its behaviour does not consist of a mere sum of reflexes.
The three great leaders of the gestalt school:
Max Wertheimer, Kurt Koffka and Wolfgang Kohler were the three great original leaders of the Gestalt school. Wertheimer had worked for the detection of hidden knowledge. Koflka’s sphere was that of imagery and thought. Kohler had specialized effectively in problems of learning.
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Wertheimer urges that motion is included in the sensation if it is supposed to include all the primary response of the brain to stimulation of the sense organs. The Gestalt psychologists contend that much of our experience built by higher mental processes is really included in sensation.
If an object is removed away from us from a distance of ten yards to that of twenty, its optical image upon the retina diminished to half its first dimensions, yet it looks about as large as before. By this we understand that we have learned to interpret the size of the retinal image in relation to the distance of the object.
The Gestalt psychologists do not accept this explanation. They say that the sensory brain process is subjected to the influence of the distance of the object, because it is a part of the total situation. In this total situation the size remains constant because of the primary brain response.
The distinction between figure and ground:
To the Gestalt psychologist the distinction between figure and ground is absolutely fundamental in the process of seeing the figure is more attractive than the ground by its very nature.
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It is somewhat difficult for a baby to see the face accurately or to have any notion of it, but at least, according to the Gestalt psychologists, he singles out the face as a compact visual unit thus the baby makes a hopeful start in being able to distinguish between figure and ground at a later stage
The study of perceptual process:
The Gestalt psychologists have devoted much of their energies to the investigation of sense perception, but it does not mean that they have regarded motor activities as falling outside the scope of psychology.
They believed that the dynamic behaviour cannot be understood by the study of sensory processes. To them the study of perceptual process is essential, in order to understand the behaviour.
They recommend studying the environment of the organism first, before going to study motor responses of the organism they think that the sense perception lays in the total activity of the organism and the motor response lies in that same ‘total activity.’
The study of behavior:
Gestalt psychology is against the stimulus-response conception. In accordance to its general objection to atomism in psychology it does not admit that behaviour can be analysed into stimulus-response units.
Many behaviorists accepted Herbert Spencer’s theory that ‘an instinct is simply a chain of reflexes.’ The Gestalt psychologists object to this conception together with the theory that a learned behaviour is an outcome of reflexes linked together by the processes of conditioning.
Moreover, they do not like the loose way in which the term ‘stimulus,’ is used by many psychologists. The Gestalt psychology remarks that the infant does not learn things by separate reflex movements which in the long run become conditioned and combined into behavior.
On the other hand, the infant starts life with behaviour of a fluid and crudely organized sort
Gestalt psychology and learning:
Kohler’s study of learning in chimpanzees is perhaps the most interesting part of all the work in the Gestalt school. He wanted to see if the chimpanzee had any intelligence and if it could rise above the trial and error method.
In order to test the intelligence of animals, Kohler agreed with Thorndike that there must be placed some obstacle and the animal must be forced to take roundabout paths, otherwise he would reach the goal straight and there would be nothing to learn.
But Kohler wanted that the animal should first of all view the whole situation, so that he might not follow the blind trial and error method if he had any insight Kohler argued that the animal should be placed in such a situation as to be able to view all the elements of the situation.
He thought that thus it would be easy to decide if the animal could combine the elements to see the pattern of the whole situation.
Kohler put a chimpanzee in a cage:
A banana was left outside the cage, tied with a string which was placed on the ground near the cage. If there were more than one string on the ground leading to the banana, but only one attached’ to it, the chimpanzee would often pull the wrong string.
A man in the situation would promptly get the banana by pulling the right string, but it was difficult for the chimpanzee to be successful in the first attempt. Nevertheless the chimpanzee showed his insight by pulling the banana sooner than many other animals.
He also showed his insight in many more complicated experiments, like piling up boxes one upon another to reach his food too high to get by jumping, two pieces of sticks into a long stick to poke his food placed on a height.
No doubt, the chimpanzee had to undergo much trial and error behaviour before being successful, but the solution was so sudden when it came, and he remembered it for the next day so well that it proved the genuineness of the insight he possessed.
The solution did not come to him incidentally, but by sensual perception, that is by seeing a combination, pattern of objects.
It showed the importance of the whole and units:
The consciousness of the four dimensional world played the major role in inspiring the law of relativity in physics. The Gestalt theory has produced an analogous revolution in the field of psychology.
We find wholes and units present everywhere in the practical world. It is only with the help of units that we are able to understand things. Even full attention to something, may not give us any result but if we change our subjective attitude, the unknown may be transformed into the known.
In his classical experiments of learning, Kohler has shown that it is after grasping the situation as a whole that the chimpanzee is able to get his desired object. His various attempts bear no fruit unless he is able to combine all the elements of the situation.
In search of a ‘stick’ the chimpanzee climbs a tree and tears off a stick. He will fail to see a stick in the tree and its branches if he considers them as a unit. He is under the pressure of the subjective search for a stick, and consequently this unit is destroyed. Thus, the subjective attitude towards the unit is changed.