Gestalt Theory In Psychology

457 Words2 Pages
The Gestalt psychologists stated that when people interpret sensory elements, they tend to see things in the entire form or a pattern rather than as individual, separate entities. When the brain interprets things in groups and arrangements, it allows itself to make sense of an entire object. The brain likes to operate with simplicity; therefore, seeing a group of objects as one whole entity lets the brain function more efficiently. The Gestalt perspective can explain these basic principles of perceptual organization: figure-ground, similarity, proximity, and closure. The first principle is figure-ground. Figure-ground is the action that the brain takes, where it pulls out the object of interest, making everything else the background. For example, when a man is in a large…show more content…
If there is a row of 20 circles on top of a row of 20 triangles, the brain will interpret it as two horizontal lines of circles and triangles as opposed to 20 vertical lines of a circle and triangle. This allows the brain to function better because it can understand two lines better than 20 lines of two different shapes. The third principle is proximity. The brain uses proximity when there are objects that are close together as one whole object. If a girl looks at a picture and there are 100 small circles within the same proximity, her brain will construe it as one large bunch of circles. Proximity makes the brain’s job much easier because one large group of circles is much simpler than 100 small circles. The last principle is closure, which is the brain filling in gaps to create an image. When the brain sees 50 dashes that are in the similar shape of a circle, the brain will perceive it as a circle. Naturally, the brain seals the dashes because it makes more sense and is more neat to the brain to understand it as an image of a circle instead of 50 dashes, all going in different

More about Gestalt Theory In Psychology

Open Document