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Hist & Syst C7, 4 Major Programs of Research - Coggle Diagram

- - - - As perceptual wholes these forms have qualities that distinguish them from elements
      - Form quality gives an object perceptual or psychological permanence despite changes in sensation
      - Song sung by different voices remains the same song
  - - - Elements that are equal and similar form groups or wholes
      - Similar elements are grouped into perceptual units → columns or rows
    - - Elements that are proximal or close together tend to be grouped
      - Closure: tendency to mentally fill in or complete missing parts of a visual configuration to make it perceptually whole or complete
      - Closure is a specific principle of perceptual organization
        
        A good Gestalt → perceived as a well-structured, coherent, and easily comprehensible whole
        
        Closure is a perceptual mechanism while good Gestalt describes visual configurations that exemplify Gestalt principles, including closure
        
        Schiller: Alpha, a chimpanzee showed a need for closure by filling in a missing part of a drawing
        
        Clincial significance: closure used in brain tests to assess brain function → linked to right hemisphere impairment
    - - Closure applies to memory not just visual stimuli
      - Waiter can remember checks until the bill is paid
      - Zeigarnik Effect: interrupted tasks were 90% more likely to be recalled → remembered better than completed ones (eg. cliffhangers, unresolved questions in advertisements)
      - Gestalt psychs highlights natural tendency to organize perceptions → creates psychological environment that differs from the physical reality
        
        Physical and psychological worlds often differ due to our perceptual organization → leads to sensory illusions
        
        Our reactions may be to psychological reality rather than physical
- - - - Argued animals were unable to demonstrate higher level reasoning in puzzle boxes
      - Devised situations that animals could solve using insight
  - - - Used insight to solve more complicated problems involving combining tools or using objects to reach bananas
      - Had moments of insight and inspiration after giving up on problem
      - Tested animals in social situations were they learned by observation and imitation
      - Reported results descriptively without numbers and statistical interpretations
    - - Stimulus-response theory → animals learn to respond to particular stimulus w a specific response
      - Gestalt theory → animals respond to stimulus as a whole
    - - Rejected empiricist accounts of emotion that claimed emotional reactions learned through experience
      - Stimuli for fear reactions included mechanical toys, demon masks
      - Work ith apes demonstrated that fear is not a learned response by showing that apes reacted w fear to novel stimuli (eg. camels or masks not paired w punishment)
- - - - Used terms like life space, boundary, direction and zone → later became important in his topological theory
      - Soldier's experience of war, soldier’s life is diff from that of civilian
      - Described depersonalization and dehumanization of enemy as embodiment of evil
    - - Found Gestalt Psych interesting but had a more applied focus
      - Inspired Zeigarnik’s research on waiter’s recall
  - - - B = f(P, E)
      - B = behavior
      - P = person
      - E = environment
    - - Criticized statistical approaches to child behavior and conceptions of the average child
      - Infant’s life space is small and undifferentiated but grows larger and more differentiated w age
      - Conducted detour studies similar to Kohler but used topology to explain results
      - People reach for pie at back of counter → amount of effort expended strengthens valence of goal (goals more attractive w effort)
      - Studied effect of frustration on play
        
        Behavior should become dedifferentiated and child should regress to earlier, more primitive and less constructive behaviors upon frustration
        
        Experiment one effects of authoritarian and democratic leadership styles on the behavior of children
        
        Far more quarreling and hostility under authoritarian style
        
        Democratic system is superior to autocracy
    - - Used action research (reflective team problem solving) to diagnose productivity problems
      - Workers felt productivity goals were unachievable but when allowed to set their own goals, productivity improved considerably → approach used in his own lab, felt he could not think productively as an individual
      - Founded society for psychological study of social issues
      - Organized major research institute → commission on community interrelations (CCI)
    - - Found that can change attitudes by changing behavior → encouraged AJC to challenge the college admissions quota system
      - Study of ways of handling a Bigot found that in playlets enacting bigotry, 80% of audience wanted to see bigot challenged, but calmly
      - Lewin died in 1947 of heart attack but work conitnued at institutes