Lecture Three: Gestalt Psychology

Gestalt Psychology is a way of thinking and comes from the German word for "form". It suggests that the perception of the "unified whole" or "configuration" is different from it's actual parts. What this means is that we see a different picture as a whole than we do from its parts. To further sum this up there are 6 laws:

Law of Similarity

The Law of Similarity states that "Items that are similar to one another will be grouped together.". and this is to make it easier for the brain to process the information. The example above shows a rectangle but most people will first see two sets of rows (one triangles and one circles).


Law of Prägnanz

The Law of Prägnanz states that "Reality is organised or reduced to the simplest form possible.". This is again another way that the brain can simplify a problem to make sense of it and means that like the example above, instead of seeing multiple and more complicated shapes we actually see a very simple set of 5 rings.


Law of Proximity

The Law of Proximity states that "Objects near each other tend to be grouped together.". As the example above shows this law shows that even though all the shapes are the same your brain will make it even simpler and group the shapes into even bigger shapes that are close to each other. This means that instead of multiple circle you have 2 shapes made up of circles which is easier to process.


Law of Continuity



The Law of Continuity states that "Lines are seen as following the smoothest path.". This law is the understanding that instead of breaking up lines into different segments your brain will make the lines flow the simplest way possible.


Law of Closure

The Law of Closure states that "Objects that are grouped together are seen as a whole.". It means as you can see from the example above that your brain will fill in the gaps that are in the image to create familiar shapes.

Law of Figure/Ground

The Law of Figure/Ground states that "Some images will be split up into figure (fore-ground) and ground (back-ground).". This basically means that some images are seen to have a fore-ground and a back-ground even though the image is 2D. If you look at the example above you will see two separate images even thought there is only one image there. It may not even be possible to see the image as a whole and not 2 separate images.