| | As opposed to the structuralist approach, which focuses on particular elements in a configuration, the Gestalt approach focuses on the configuration itself. While no clear example of how visual configurations between objects are made exists, the Gestalt laws provide psychologists with a firm idea of how these visual groupings are produced.
Gestalt psychology is seen as an alternative to behaviorism and introspectionism. The early Gestalt thinkers felt that behaviorism dealt too much with collecting, tallying, and treating only specific problems, or parts of a whole. The Germans use the term "gestalt" to refer to seeing a whole as being greater than the sum of its individual parts. This word has no actual English equivalent, and is a difficult term to define outside of the native tongue of founders.
Gestalt psychologists use this concept to identify and understand the roles and relationships between people. Seeing the group as individuals each adding their own traits and qualities to create a larger picture. |
| Gestalt theory is interdisciplinary as it provides a basis for explaining many psychological phenomena, processess and applications. Gestalt theory views human beings as open systems, actively and constantly interacting with the environment around them. Unlike the elementistic way of understanding psychological events, such as behaviorism, associationism, and psychoanalysis, Gestalt theory is suited to understanding the order and structure of psychological events. |
| Objects that are closer to one another tend to be grouped together. |
| Objects that are more similar or more alike to one another tend to be grouped together. Any dimension can be used to determine similarity: for example size, shape, color, luminance, or motion. |
| Objects that form closed units tend to be grouped together. |
| Elements forming continuous lines or curves are grouped together. |
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