Please read chapter 9. After reading the chapter, please respond to the following questions:
What were three (3) things from the chapter that you found interesting? Why were they interesting to you? What one (1) thing did you find the least interesting? Why?
What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
How, in what ways, does this chapter relate (build on) to the previous chapters?
What topic would you like to learn more about? Why ?
What ideas did you have while reading the chapter?
During my reading of chapter 9 one of the topics I found to be interesting was on Principles of Perceptual Organization. It talks about how one of our most basic human perception tendencies is to separate whole figure from their backgrounds, which provides foundation for all object perception. This is also known as, figure-ground segregation, which was first described in 1915 by Edgar Rubin a Danish psychologist. According to Rubin, figures have several distinct features that enable them to be isolated from backgrounds. For example while the ground seems to extend behind the figure, even though we know otherwise. By changing your focus on a certain object you may also see different shapes or even a completely different figure, people may see what their personality see’s as well ( a happy person see’s something positive, while a mad person see’s something negative). Another topic I found interesting was on Kohler’s Insight on Apes, I found this interesting because of everything he found out about them, how much they are truly related to our species. Kohler and his family actually lived on an island for a year conducting research. This topic also goes back to chapter 7 on Thorndike’s discussion of learning and problem solving and how everything was a process. Kohler discusses how he thought problem solving was a mechanical, step-by-step process, and that solutions occur when individuals can view the entire problem fields and rearrange the elements of the problem into something new for them to understand better to be able to solve. Kohler also did a study where Apes were in a closed area with a banana sitting on the other side, only to be reached by something long. The Apes were given 2 short sticks; can even the smartest Ape know to put the sticks together to reach the banana? The Apes did a trial error process, also discussed by Thorndike; the Ape eventually did get the banana. Kohler did introduce a new way of thinking into debate about learning and problem solving and extended animal methodology beyond Thorndike’s puzzle boxes and mazes. Another topic I found to be interesting was Wertheimer and his views on productive thinking. Wertheimer had an interest in thinking and problem solving; he had a range of topics which included teaching children math to Einstein developing his theory of relativity. A good example of his gestalt teaching principles was on how to teach children geometry. He first deplored the traditional approach to teaching math, which relied heavily on asking the students to memorize rules and formulas without giving them true insight into the concepts behind the symbols. Because most students had already memorized the rules for finding the area of a rectangle, they could now determine the area of a parallelogram, and so on. The next day he visited the classroom again but with a different parallelogram, and he found that most students could not find the area. Wertheimer believed children would be more productive thinkers if they truly understood the concept area. For Wertheimer, productive thinking in the classroom went far beyond the memorization of sets of rules and formulas for the correct solution. This I believe to be so true, as a student I feel that if the classroom doesn’t fully understand the concept get them to explore the whole idea or problem, not just the base line. I feel a lot of this goes back to the Thorndike’s problem solving skills but of course different, but still good to understand his point of view to see what the difference is and how some of the psychologists came up with what they did. Of the topics I found to be the least interesting was the topic on behavioral versus geographic environments. This topic I thought was kind of boring and thought it repeated stuff a lot. It talked about the importance of distinguishing between geographical and behavioral environment; also about physical reality and reality as we perceive it. Maybe it was simply stated and not really talked about much and that it wasn’t described very well might be making it not interesting. I would like to learn more about the physical reality and how we perceive it more, this was more interesting than the different environments. Kurt Lewin elaborated more on this, just not very much in the book itself.
During my reading of chapter 9 one of the topics I found to be interesting was on Principles of Perceptual Organization. It talks about how one of our most basic human perception tendencies is to separate whole figure from their backgrounds, which provides foundation for all object perception. This is also known as, figure-ground segregation, which was first described in 1915 by Edgar Rubin a Danish psychologist. According to Rubin, figures have several distinct features that enable them to be isolated from backgrounds. For example while the ground seems to extend behind the figure, even though we know otherwise. By changing your focus on a certain object you may also see different shapes or even a completely different figure, people may see what their personality see’s as well ( a happy person see’s something positive, while a mad person see’s something negative). Another topic I found interesting was on Kohler’s Insight on Apes, I found this interesting because of everything he found out about them, how much they are truly related to our species. Kohler and his family actually lived on an island for a year conducting research. This topic also goes back to chapter 7 on Thorndike’s discussion of learning and problem solving and how everything was a process. Kohler discusses how he thought problem solving was a mechanical, step-by-step process, and that solutions occur when individuals can view the entire problem fields and rearrange the elements of the problem into something new for them to understand better to be able to solve. Kohler also did a study where Apes were in a closed area with a banana sitting on the other side, only to be reached by something long. The Apes were given 2 short sticks; can even the smartest Ape know to put the sticks together to reach the banana? The Apes did a trial error process, also discussed by Thorndike; the Ape eventually did get the banana. Kohler did introduce a new way of thinking into debate about learning and problem solving and extended animal methodology beyond Thorndike’s puzzle boxes and mazes. Another topic I found to be interesting was Wertheimer and his views on productive thinking. Wertheimer had an interest in thinking and problem solving; he had a range of topics which included teaching children math to Einstein developing his theory of relativity. A good example of his gestalt teaching principles was on how to teach children geometry. He first deplored the traditional approach to teaching math, which relied heavily on asking the students to memorize rules and formulas without giving them true insight into the concepts behind the symbols. Because most students had already memorized the rules for finding the area of a rectangle, they could now determine the area of a parallelogram, and so on. The next day he visited the classroom again but with a different parallelogram, and he found that most students could not find the area. Wertheimer believed children would be more productive thinkers if they truly understood the concept area. For Wertheimer, productive thinking in the classroom went far beyond the memorization of sets of rules and formulas for the correct solution. This I believe to be so true, as a student I feel that if the classroom doesn’t fully understand the concept get them to explore the whole idea or problem, not just the base line. I feel a lot of this goes back to the Thorndike’s problem solving skills but of course different, but still good to understand his point of view to see what the difference is and how some of the psychologists came up with what they did. Of the topics I found to be the least interesting was the topic on behavioral versus geographic environments. This topic I thought was kind of boring and thought it repeated stuff a lot. It talked about the importance of distinguishing between geographical and behavioral environment; also about physical reality and reality as we perceive it. Maybe it was simply stated and not really talked about much and that it wasn’t described very well might be making it not interesting. I would like to learn more about the physical reality and how we perceive it more, this was more interesting than the different environments. Kurt Lewin elaborated more on this, just not very much in the book itself.
The first thing that I found interesting from this chapter was the concept of a geographical environment versus a behavioral environment. I thought this concept was interesting in the fact that they consider the behavioral environment one that influences how we act but in my opinion for a person to act on something everything must be considered including the geographical environment. Take putting on a coat, you wouldn't put on the goat (behavioral environment) without it being cold outside (geographical environment). I think instead of having two separate types of environments its more sensical in my opinion to mention that they must overlap at least once in a while for people to function the way they do.
The second thing I found interesting in this chapter was Kohler's blatant disregard for any of Thorndike's ideas. THe way the book explained it it seemed as if Kohler may have even had a personal experience to build up such a discontent for Thorndike and his ideas about learning. Not to mention that Kohler's big experiment with the two bamboo sticks and Sultan partially proved to strengthened Thorndike's ideas.
The final thing I found interesting in this chapter was the idea called the Von Restorff effect. I think it goes along with the figure-ground principle mentioned earlier in the chapter that states that our principle of perception starts with decerning the ground from the figure in whatever we may be looking at. The Von Resorff effect tells us that we are better off remembering things that are not complete rather than complete figures. I believe that this may have some relation to each other because you want to recognize something that's different. Just like we recognize the figure from the ground because it stands out, something that is unfinish may trigger in our minds that it is not complete or still needs work. We may then store that information for ourselves so if later we get the chance we can go back and fix whatever is not complete.
One thing that I diskliked about this chapter was that the book really didn't elaborate on anything that Kohler did besides his partial failure with Sultan. I know he is a very well known psychologist that did many things that are not mentioned in the book that I would have liked to see.
I think that the part about how Gestalt theory is used in America would be really helpful in my understanding of the history of psychology. We don't often hear about how the things we learn about are influencing other countries, and most often the people we talk about are not American and aren't included in American culture. So I believe it was very information about how Gestalt theory was in America and how it was influencing the community there.
This chapter goes a little bit further then the other ones in explaining the Gestalt theory side of psychology since it is a fairly new and relevant source of information in the field. It's a whole flip flop from the rest of the chapters bottom-up processing styles and it turns it around to look at Gestalt, which is essentially top-down processing, that is, looking at the whole before seeing all the parts.
I think I would really enjoy learning more about Kohler and his monkey experiements and maybe if he did any other experiments to try to solidify what he thought of as the correct way of processing information and problem solving.
I first wondered if Kohler may believe that there could be a difference in the way that humans problem solve versus the way that animals problem solve and if there were any experiments out there that specifically foucused on humans, not that you can do many experiments on humans but if there were any at all.
I also wondered if the Gestalt theorists had any interaction at all with any structuralists and how that would go down because they seem to be coming from very different sides of a coin in their opinions on how things should be looked at (aka top-down vs. bottom-up)
The three topics in this chapter that I found most interesting were Köhler, organizing principles, and Lewin. First, Köhler spoke out against the dismissal of Jewish professors in Nazi Germany (Goodwin, 2008), which I found admirable. To that end, he wrote the last published anti-Nazi article in Germany at the time, causing his lectures to be monitored (Goodwin, 2008). Köhler suggested that through our perception we reconfigure a problem until we find a solution, this was his idea of insight (Goodwin, 2008). Lastly, I enjoyed reading about Köhler’s ape research. Though Köhler disagreed with Thorndike’s theory about trial and error learning, his own research on apes proved Thorndike’s theory right (Goodwin, 2008). The trial and error theory is supported by the fact that one of Köhler’s apes, Sultan, through trial and error, was able to combine two sticks to make a longer stick which enabled him to retrieve some bananas (Goodwin, 2008).
I also found the topic of Gestalt organizing principles to be interesting. According to the text, the organizing principles are basic rules that define how “phenomena become organized into whole, meaningful figures” (Goodwin, 2008). When we perceive an object, we separate it from its background—figure-ground segregation (Goodwin, 2008). Sometimes we can reverse our perception and see the background as the main object and the figure as secondary, this is called figure-ground reversal (Goodwin, 2008). The organizing principles also include proximity, similarity, and good continuation for explaining perception—we perceive things as grouped according to their proximity to each other, we tend to group things based on similarities, and we tend to continue an incomplete image due to our perception of how the image should be (Goodwin, 2008). This principle also suggests that perception mirrors reality—that is we perceive things that are likely to be true (Goodwin, 2008). The text also suggests that our perception of our environment determines our actions (Goodwin, 2008). Finally, there are two separate environments in which we live—our geographical environment, which consists of the world as it actually is; and our behavioral environment, the world as we perceive it as individuals (Goodwin, 2008).
I found Lewin especially interesting because he suggested that a person cannot be understood without first understanding what he called their “life space,” that is the person and their environment (Goodwin, 2008). I find this so interesting because as a Social Work major I have been taught that it is important to look at people using a person-in-environment model in which a person’s problems cannot be attributed to them alone, but to the many environmental systems that influence their lives. Lewin suggested three types of conflicts—approach-approach, avoidance-avoidance, and approach-avoidance. Approach-approach occurs when a person desires two things of equal quality, but can only choose one (Goodwin, 2008). Avoidance-avoidance occurs when a person must choose between two equally undesirable things (Goodwin, 2008). Approach-avoidance occurs when a person must make a decision and thinks of reasons both for and against the proposed outcome (Goodwin, 2008). In addition, Lewin experimented on leadership styles with a group of ten-year-old boys; he separated the boys into three groups either governed by an authoritarian leader, a democratic leader, or a laissez-faire leader (Goodwin 315). He found that boys with the authoritarian leader lacked motivation, that those under a democratic leader worked well together and produced good results, and that those working under the laissez-faire leadership demonstrated a lack of organization and an inability to cooperate (Goodwin, 2008). Finally, Lewin believed that psychology had a place not only in discovering the cause of behavior, but in helping people to change their behavior for the betterment of society (Goodwin, 2008).
I felt that apparent motion (Goodwin, 2008) was the least interesting subject. While it was somewhat interesting to me it seems like common sense nowadays because we have the “moving” Christmas lights and other similar things that exemplify the way our mind can trick us into thinking the lights are actually moving.
I think that the information on perception and how it affects our lives to such a large degree is going to help me understand the history of psychology because it ties back to historicist thinking (Goodwin, 2008)—if we can try to understand something through the perception of the person who suggested it, or through the general perceptions of the time, then we can better understand it.
I would like to learn more about Lewin because his ideas fit so closely with mine as a Social Work major—I feel that he really wanted to help society to be better and that his ideas work well with social welfare frameworks.
My thoughts mostly focused around the similarities between the different studies that have been done by various psychologists over time. I was interested in the fact that though Köhler hoped to disprove Thorndike’s theory he ended up supporting it. The facts that are produced through research are able to give real insight because while the original hypothesis might be disproven, we are able to draw other conclusions that are based on fact.
References
Goodwin, C. J. (2008). A history of modern psychology. (Third ed., pp. 9, 293-295, 298-304, 310-312, 315-317). John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
The first thing I found interesting in chapter nine was Franz Brentano’s views compared to Titchener’s views. Brentano argued that the important thing about studying the mind was not to examine it’s contents, or even to understand the underlying physiology, but to understand how the mind operates to create our experiences. When studying perception, for example, the important thing is not a detailed description of the sensations, images, and affects, as would occur in Titchener’s lab. Rather, from an empirical standpoint, the important thing is the act of perceiving, how the individual perceives the event, and what the even means to the individual. Brentano’s system has been called an act psychology, because of the emphasis on the mind as an active entity. I found this interesting because I like this view of thinking more than Titchener’s. I like it because I believe it helps people understand other people better by knowing how different people interact to different things. The second thing I found interesting was the figures on page 300. The figures (a and b) demonstrated reversible figure ground illustrations from Rubin and figure c illustrated a modern application of a figure-ground reversal. I liked looking at these pictures because I am a visual learner and so by looking at the pictures it made me better understand the concepts written in the text. The third thing I found interesting was Wertheimer’s productive thinking. Wertheimer believed that children would be more productive thinkers if they truly understood the bigger concepts instead of the finer concepts. I found this interesting because I feel like if my math teacher’s used this when I was growing up I would have understood it a lot more. The one thing I didn’t find interesting in this chapter was reading about isomorphism. I didn’t find this interesting because it was a harder concept for me to understand. In chapter nine the thing that helps understand the history of psychology the most is just understanding the different concepts dealing with the mind. By learning and understanding the different views we can put them together with the concepts and why they are different and why they are similar. This chapter builds on the previous chapters by introducing a new concept of gestalt psychology. Gestalt psychology is understood in terms of the overall patterns of relationships among objects in the field. I would like to learn more about Kohler and his work with apes. I find it interesting when psychologists do experiments with animals and what they can learn from them and then compare that to humans. The only idea I had reading this chapter was how people can get complete opposite views on one thing. Is there something in our brain that is different from other people that causes our views to be different?
After reading chapter 9, I found the following 3 topics to be very interesting, because I love learning about behavioral aspects of psychology and working with animals.
1. Geographical vs. Behavioral environment- These two concepts go hand in hand because one might view the world as it is physically, but perceive it differently. Geographical environment is physical thinking and cognition, while behavioral environment is the way a person will act in that environment. I really enjoyed the example of an old German folktale on a person traveling in the snow thought he was riding his horse on a plain, but in fact it was a frozen lake. When one is conflicted between what they thought it was, to the actual geographical environment, it can be a stressful difference. This is interesting because many people do not really “think” about their physically surroundings and just automatically “know” how the world is around them. However, that same person could perceive a physically environment differently then a person with a disability or viewpoint of the world.
2.-Kohler on Insight in Apes- I really liked reading about Kohler’s research with the mentality of apes. Kohler wanted to use apes for problem solving issues, such as seeing the whole problem and coming up with a new way to configure the answer. In his research he used 2 bamboo sticks of different lengths and bananas outside the cage to see if the ape would use his “insight.” It took the ape a long time to put the sticks together and solve the “problem.” However, Kohler’s experiment left American psychologists to wonder of the trial and error mistakes of the research, and learning new ways besides Thorndikes boxes and mazes.
3. Lewin in Iowa- I thought this was very interesting that one of the most classic study in developmental psychology literature happened in Iowa. Lewin studied children in groups in Iowa City and conducted a research to determine the effects of frustration on the quality of play for children under 4. The research showed that the children had play time and had a good time, but once across the room there were “better toys” and allowed a little time they had even “more fun.” Moreover, the children returned to the other side of the room and became frustrated because they wanted the “better toy” area. The children would get emotionally upset and play with their toys angrily. This was very interesting because little children have such a high emotional rage without control. This study was fun to read!!
*One thing I did not enjoy about the chapter was that the Nazi party threatened many Jewish scientists. Being jewish myself, It was very frustrating to read about!!
*Learning about the geographical and behavioral environment opened my eyes to modern day psychology and the history of psychology. Many people are able to view things differently because of history. The whole concept really helped me to understand why people were interested in perceiving our world.
*This chapter relates to prior ones because it discusses Thorndike’s boxes versus Kohler’s ape studies, and using developmental and behavioral approaches to conduct research.
*I would love to learn more or watch a video on the Mentality of Ape research. I love when psychologists or zoologists work with animals to solve problems. *One idea I had while reading this chapter was: do many religious groups accept or challenge Gestalt psychology/visions??
After reading chapter 9 there were several topics I found to be interesting. The first section I enjoyed was the section on principles of perceptual organization. The term figure-ground is used to describe this. As the book mentions it’s our basic tendency to separate whole figures from their backgrounds. It mentions that figures have several features that enable them to be isolated from backgrounds.one of these is that the figure is more important than the ground. There are three principles that are mentioned. Proximity, similarity, and good continuation. I found this to be very interesting because it seemed to me that our mind provides the most reasonable guess about the nature being perceived. It was also very interesting on how different people would perceive the same thing based on mindset. This reminds me of those illusion books from when I was a kid. You had to let your eyes cross to gather the image within all the crossed lines and pictures. Another thing I found interesting in this section was field theory. This was a theory that proposed understanding a person’s behavior required that you know all the forces acting on the person. Life space is the particular field the individual operates in. although this seems to be common sense now I feel it made a big difference back then in determining the issues of clients. Other factors in life effect people and how they handle things and without acknowledging that, there could have been major diagnosis problems. Accounting for all the things in people’s lives is vital to the understanding of why they do things and their purpose for acting in a particular way. The third thing I found interesting was Kurt Lewin’s equilibrium state. This state of an equilibrium was describes as a needs based idea. When the person had, their needs meant there is equilibrium in their life. When needs have not been meant, there is disequilibrium. This idea reminds me of a survival instinct. When something is needed your focus shifts to the need at hand. Things vital to survival such as food and water would be major needs that need satisfied. The book mentioned 3 common situations when a conflict between needs occurs. The three were approach-approach conflict, avoidance-avoidance conflict and approach-avoidance conflict. The section I found least interesting was on apparent motion. This seemed like what we now know as an optical illusion. It did not really grab my attention as the other sections did. It could have been how the section started out by describing it as a motion picture industry term. When it described the paper and experiments used to prove this it did not go in depth enough to make me interested.
The thing I felt that would benefit me the most in the understanding of history was the information on perception. These sections discussed issues that affect our everyday lives to a large degree. If you stop to think about it, anything from mood to individual understanding can affect our perceptions. This also ties into the history of psych because other things such a research and experiments. How one perceives things can be very different from one individual to another. A famous quote comes to mind after reading this section: Perception is Reality. - Lee Atwater. How one perceives things makes his/her reality a reality even if it’s perceived wrong. This chapter built on previous chapters by expanding on such things as perception. It gave more in depth discussion and information compared to previous chapters that just scraped the surface. Terms were also included and described along with some research studies.
Even though the book did a good job on the section of principles of perceptual organization, I would still like to learn more about it. I would like to learn more about this because of the wide range of perception possibilities. How the examples in the book came to be used, and why those examples compared to other examples entice people’s perceptual differences. After reading this chapter, I thought a lot about how I have looked at things in the past and others have perceived it very differently. This chapter gave me some knowledge on why this happened but also gave me new questions. Why do certain people see different images in figure 9.4? Some see two people while others see a vase or birdbath. I wonder how individual differences can shape people’s perceptions. Life experience? Eye sight? Mood?
The first topic that I found to be interesting in chapter 9 was in respect of some of Wolfgang Kohler's life. One of the interesting pieces of his life is his studies of primates on Tenerife. These years are considered to be the ones that made him a scientist and his research some of his most imortant. He was offered the opportnuity to study the primates from the Prussian Academy of Sciences just before the breakout of WWI. He and his family made it to the island, but as soon as they did the war broke out and they were then strandedon the Canary Islands just of the coast of northwest Africa near Spain. Due to the location and some other information that has been found many people beleive that he was not there to study just primates, but also as a German spy. In the readings it explains that he really did not get along with the apes and he even nearly got his finger bitten off by one. So instead, his wife did alot of the close handleing with the apes. This leads me to wonder who made the decision to send him anyway if he didn't even want to be on the ape enclosure.
After the war once he returned from the islands and began to teach. While doing so he stood up for the Jewish population and against Hitler to the point that he wondered why he had not been imprissoned. Slowly his classes were watch closer and he had to sensor what he said so much that he took his wife and kids and moved to the United States. There his took a less prestigous job at Swarthmore College, but he knew he had to get away from Hitler and his army.
The next topic that I found to be interesting were the principles of perceptual organization. The most basic is figure-ground segregation which is the tendency to seperate the figure from the background. The was actually first described in 1915 by Edgar Rubin and early psychologist. In relation to this topic the book provides some wonderful illustrations that help to make the point clear. Other principles that are mentioned are proximity. This is the desire for the brain to group close objects together. The principle of similarity is the brains desire to group together things that have similar characteristics. Lastly, the principle of good continuation is the desire of the brain to organize things to flow smoothly.
The final item that I would like to mention as interesting is the Von Restorff effect. This was first discovered by Hedwig von Restorff. This effect says that things that stand out and are different are easier to recall that information that is like the rest. This interesting because it can be seen on all levels of education and throughout society as we live out daily lives. For instance, when we are try to learn a strange to place we identify land marks that are different than the rest to know and remember where we are and where we are going.
Something that I did not like that really suprised me was the section of the life and works of Max Wertheimer. He was the man the originated Gastalt Psychology. It was so suprising to me that I did not like it becuase I usually like learning about were things begin and how they started to form. However, to be it did not seem like he really did much with it. He just kind of found it and didn't really do much more than that. This could of course be they way the information if presented and it would be interesting to read and find out if there is more to Max. I also took note that the section on the studies of Kolhler is one that you can get alot more understanding out of if you have the knowledge of Titchner. In a way it can even be a little comical teh way Kohler refused to think that any of Thitchner's Ideas could be right and then at the end he winds up agreeing with him.
Finally, I would like to learn more about Lewin and his studies of Developmental Psychology, because that area of study is something that really interests me. In particular his studies on differentiation are something that facinates me and is something that we can learn more about and could make a difference in society.
After reading chapter 9, the first thing I found interesting was Wertheimer’s views on productive thinking. For Wertheimer, he wasn’t all about the rules and equations that students traditionally learn in a math class. He was about understanding the concept, and understanding why it is this way, or why it is that way. He tested his idea in a geometry class, and found his theories to be correct. The students did not learn as well if they were forced to simply memorize concepts without understanding them. I can definitely relate to this and agree with him. I feel that I have to understand something, not just memorize it, for me to really grasp the concept. Another thing I found interesting was the Principles of Perceptual Organization. Edgar Rubin first described this as figure-ground separation, which is the tendency to separate a whole figure from its background. I think it is so interesting that just by changing your focus on an object; you could potentially see different figures and/or shapes. A third thing I found interesting was Kohler’s views of Thorndike. Kohler completely disregarded Thorndike’s ideas, and for what reason, I do not know! In fact, Kohler’s experiment with the apes and bamboo sticks actually supported Thorndike’s ideas. I just did not understand why Kohler had this mindset about Thorndike. So the fact that he neglected any of Thorndike’s work just confuses me, really. There was not really anything I did not like about this chapter, but the topic of apparent motion just seemed to be common sense to me and I found it kind of boring. I think it is safe to say that MOST of our population knows that “moving” Christmas lights or holiday lights are not actually moving.
I think the Gestalt theory is most important to understanding the history of psychology. More specifically, how this theory was applied in America. I have noticed throughout the chapter that most of the people and ideas we learn about come from other countries and we were the ones learning from them. So I think that seeing how this theory was applied in our country would be beneficial to learning about the history of psychology. Also I think that by comparing this idea to structuralism would help us learn more as well.
This chapter builds on previous chapters by discussing behavioral and developmental approaches to doing research. This was applied in several areas of the chapter. Also, Thorndike’s work was mentioned again and compared to Kohler’s work in this chapter.
I would like to learn more about Kohler’s studies with apes. I find this topic very interesting because I love animal studies and learning how similar we actually are to many of them. I also would like to learn what it was like to actually live on the island with them and using all of his time to conduct research.
During this chapter I thought about Thorndike’s work that we had previously learned about, and why Kohler felt that he needed to disprove him. In fact, all Kohler did was support Thorndike’s ideas, so I think it would be interesting to see how Kohler felt after he found out he did not actually disprove his ideas. Also, the topic of physical reality caught my attention and I think it would also be interesting to learn more about how we perceive this.
The first thing that interested me was the material on Max Wertheimer and the perceptual problem of apparent motion. This is the phenomenon in which stationary stimuli appear to move under certain circumstances. An example would be flashing two small circles in a darkened room. The two circles are flashed on and off alternating from one side to the other. If the interval between the flashing lights is just right, the perception isn’t two lights, but of one light that moves from side to side. The traditional explanation of this centered on sensory-motor events. The person’s eyes would move from left to right over and over. These eye movements made the mind think the light was moving. Wertheimer was able to research this further thanks to help from Friedrich Schumann. Also, help from Wolfgang Kohler and Kurt Koffka helped in creating a 1912 paper called, “Experimental Studies on the Perception of Movement.” This is often considered the founding event of Gestalt psychology. While researching, Wertheimer and his colleagues performed another flashing light study. There were three lights used in this study. There were three lights in a straight line, A, B, and C. If lights A and C were flashed on and off simultaneously, then B was flashed, the perception was that lights A and C had moved to the center point at the same time. This eliminated the explanation of eye movement, because a person’s eyes cannot move in two directions. Wertheimer later called his new explanation of this as the phi phenomenon, which was his term for apparent motion stating that apparent motion wasn’t perceived. Instead, it was illusory. This was all very interesting. Some of the things that have been studied about the brain are very shocking. It’s crazy how our mind works sometimes. If multiple lights are flashed at the right times, our mind will think it’s only one light moving. Another interesting thing about Wertheimer was that he had to move to the United States to continue his work as Hitler fired him, because he was a Jew. I wonder if his ideas on apparent motion would have made it to the United States if that hadn’t happened.
The next thing that interested me was the information provided about behavioral and geographic environments. Kurt Koffka came up with this in his book, Principles of Gestalt Psychology. He stated that geographic environment is the world as it is, and the behavioral environment is how people perceive the world. The behavioral environment determines how people act. An example Koffka came up with was a man riding a horse through what he thought was an open snow-covered plain. When he arrived at the inn, the innkeeper asked which direction he came from. He pointed at where he came from, and the innkeeper was shocked. He went on to tell the man that he was over a lake. At that point, the man became shocked and began to panic. His behavioral environment was, “this seems to be a wide open plain,” while his geographical environment was, “that frozen lake could have cracked from the weight of the horse, and I could have drowned.” The point he’s trying to make is that if the behavioral and geographic environments differ, then two people in the same geographic environment might perceive it differently. This was very interesting, because it makes a lot of sense. If a paleontologist and a baseball player walk through a museum, they will probably perceive it very differently. People may be in the same place or situation, but most of the time, the way they perceive the situation will differ.
Another thing that interested me was the material on Wolfgang Kohler and his idea of insight. He challenged Thorndike’s puzzle box experiments, which stated that learning and problem solving was a process of trial and accidental success. Kohler thought that solutions to problems occur when people can view the entire problem field and rearrange the elements of the problem into a new configuration. This is when he came up with the term insight. Kohler thought that Thorndike’s main problem was that the animals could never perceive the entire field. Kohler did the experiment by putting the whole experiment in front of the animals. He used apes and put a banana outside of their cage. He left two sticks there, but they were both too short to reach the banana. He wanted to see if any of the apes would connect the two sticks to retrieve the banana. One of the smartest apes did indeed combine the sticks and retrieve the banana, which has all the components of Kohler’s insight definition. I liked learning about this, because I was very interested in Thorndike’s puzzle box experiments. The flaws of his experiment weren’t really mentioned, so it was interesting to learn about another person challenging his study. The basic changes Kohler made to the experiment made a lot of sense. With the animals being able to see the whole problem, it was easier for them to come up with their possible solution.
The information I thought was the least interesting was the material on isomorphism. It was very confusing, and I just found myself feeling lost while reading it. I was very interested in the other material presented about Kohler, but this just didn’t make a lot of sense to me. The material that will be most useful to me in understanding the history of psychology is the information about apparent motion. I really enjoy learning about the brain and the different parts of it that make people act the way they do. This builds on the last chapter by continuing to introduce new individuals that are using past ideas to help make up their own. Also, this chapter includes Kohler challenging one of Thorndike’s experiments, which was introduced in a previous chapter. He made improvements to the experiment. That seems to happen a lot as time moves along. Individuals create their own experiments by improving the previous experiment by patching up the flaws. A topic I’d like to learn more about is Kohler’s experiment challenging Thorndike’s puzzle box experiment. The book gave a very brief overview of the experiment, I’d like to learn more about the details of the experiment, rather than just the basics. While I was reading the chapter, I wondered if the work of Wertheimer would have ever found its way to America if it hadn’t been for Hitler firing him because he was a Jew. Also, I wondered what experiment other psychologists favor in the puzzle box experiments. Thorndike performed the first one, but Kohler made some changes, and it’d be interesting to find out which experiment people think is better.
Chapter 9
The most interesting thing that I read about in chapter nine was probably Kurt Lewin and his expansion of the gestalt vision. I could relate with him and his action research because of my interest in social psychology. I feel like I am always thinking about why a person behaves the way they do and how environmental factors influence our actions, but I have never thought of this idea as an equation. Behavior is the product of a person and their environment with the factors influencing their actions at a given moment. I thought that it was neat to look behavior in this way because it was new to me and also unusual that something mathematical sparked my interest when normally I consider myself more into theoretical aspects. The second thing that I found interesting about Kurt Lewin was his emphasis on the importance of motivation and goal-directedness of behavior. I took the course Motivation and Emotion with Kim MacLin and ended up really enjoying the class and its content, so it is interesting for me to think about just how important motivation is in our everyday lives. If you really think about it, we are always working towards some thing. Whether it is going to college to get a job or taking a different route to work to avoid traffic, there is always a reason for why we are doing what we do. It would not make sense to discredit the importance of motivation because without it there would be no behavior. I look at the term goal-directedness as a way of having control over our behavior. If we set the right goals and work towards something positive, that can only improve our mood and actions. The third thing that I found interesting about Lewin was his study of the consequences of different types of leadership styles. He found that adolescent boys were more effective when lead by a democratic leader rather than by an autocratic one. I think this is interesting because I don’t think many people abide by that, we are expected to respect authority at all times and to never question it. I think that Lewin’s theory would contradict such practices of the military using complete control. The one thing that I found the least interesting in the chapter was probably Wertheimer principles of figure-ground and proximity and similarity because I have already learned about them and nothing was new information to me.
What will be the most useful in learning about the history of psychology might be the origins and development of gestalt psychology. Chapter nice introduces this method of psychology that only adds onto the previous chapters of the transformation into the twentieth century. It all encompasses the importance of looking for patterns in the relationships among objects and their environment. One thing that I would like to learn more about is the term Pragnanz because the meaning sounds like something that people do every day. I would want to find out if it is really as negative as I am previewing it. This falls into the whole theme or idea of the chapter, perception. A lot goes into why and how we perceive different things in our environment and studying psychology and its history can help us answer some of these questions.
While reading chapter 9, one of the things I found interesting was Kurt Lewin’s field theory which talks about how a person is centered about their personality and their environment. The important point is that it is not just the environment that affects the individual, but it is also how they perceive or think about the environment. While reading this section, I thought about the ABC’s of behavior: Antecedent, Behavior, and Consequences.
A second thing from the chapter that I found interesting was Kurt Lewin’s experiment on leadership. He wanted to see the effects of three leadership styles: authoritarian, democratic, and laissez-faire. He used ten year old boys who were given craft projects. (I found this interesting because of a developmental class I took where we discussed similar experiments.) He then observed and recorded the results and effects of each leadership style. He found, when the group was under an authoritarian leader, that the children showed no interest in the task and also were submissive and showed no initiative. When under a laissez-faire leader, the group was found to lack direction and this lead to confusion and hostility and not much got completed. The democratic leader was found to do the best. The group seemed to be more cohesive and task oriented.
The third thing from chapter 9 that I found interesting was Kohler’s work with apes. I found this interesting because it builds off of Thorndike’s experiment. It tries to show that Thorndike was wrong to think that all learning is a case of trial and error. Kohler wanted the animals to have a full view of the field and have everything to solve the problem in view. This way he could demonstrate insight learning. In one experiment a banana was placed outside of the cage and out of the ape’s reach. Two bamboo sticks were available, but neither alone would reach the bananas. Kohler wonder if a smart chimpanzee could solved the problem by putting the two sticks together; sure enough one of them did. They did not use trial and error learning, but seemed to show insight into the situation. They problem solved but not in a way that Thorndike would have predicted. This seems like a real challenge to Thorndike’s way of viewing how learning happens.
If I had to name one thing that to me wasn’t as interesting in chapter 9 it would be Max Wertheimer; I didn’t find the founding of Gestalt psychology too interesting. I found the start to Gestalt psychology boring, but did find the expansion and development of it more interesting. The laws of perceptual organization seem to be the main idea. (I remember they were even covered in our introductory textbook.) I would like to know more about what else Gestalt psychology had to say and what has become of it.
The evolution of Gestalt psychology was the most useful concept in understanding the history of psychology. It challenged both the structuralists and the behaviorists. Interesting and important elements included: How it started and how it grew. How it contrasted with behaviorism and with structural psychology and how again American psychology was influenced by ideas from Europe.
This chapter relates to previous chapters because it talks about psychologists from other counties coming here to America and bringing their ideas with them, such as in the last chapter when Goddard brought the Binet-Simon scale over and then other psychologists branched off from that.
The topic would I would like to learn more about is Kohlers ape studies; I would be interested in finding more information on other experiments he did with apes. I also wonder if he did anything else with comparative psychology -- did he experiment with any other kinds of animals.
The main idea I had while reading this chapter was the different types of psychology and how they relate to each other and how they differ. While reading this chapter on Gestalt psychology I thought about other aspects of psychology. I have learned about behaviorism, social psychology, developmental psychology, and comparative psychology and now a still different approach entirely --- Gestalt psychology.
The first section that I found interesting in Chapter 9 was the section about principles of perceptual organization. One reason why I found this interesting was because I have taken sensation and perception, so these concepts and ideas came back to me because I had previously learned them in that class. One of our most basic perceptual tendencies is to separate whole figures from their backgrounds. This concept is called figure-ground. Edgar Rubin first coined this term in 1915, he was a Danish psychologist that studied with Muller and was also known for establishing the phenomenon called “paradoxical warmth”. Depending on the background of the figure or picture you are trying to view, it may be manipulated to portray one thing, but then using the figure-ground technique, we can use the background to actually see a whole different side of the picture. A good example of this is the vase/two faces example found in the book. Wertheimer wrote a paper in 1923 entitled “Laws of Organization in Perceptual Forms”, from this paper we gather three other gestalt principles. The first is the principle of proximity. This is when we challenge the reader to perceive individual dots instead of seeing a whole picture; this may look more towards another principle called similarity. This is when we are compelled to perceive alternating vertical columns of open and closed dots. The third and final principle is called the good continuation, this is when we have the tendency to organize our perceptions in smoothly flowing directions. All of these organizing principles that were just discussed and described have something in common called the law of simplicity or what gestalt psychologists called “Pragnanz”, which is roughly translated to “good figure”. It refers to the basic tendency as humans to use our perceptions to mirror reality as much as possible.
I found the sections of behavioral versus geographical environments and psychophysical isomorphism both really interesting. Gestaltists, most notably Koffka, made an important distinction between the world as it is and what he called the geographical environment, and the world as we perceive it, the behavioral environment. If the behavioral and geographical environments differ, then two people in the same geographical environment might perceive it differently. Gestaltists also theorized about the relationship between perception and underlying brain processes. Their position on this ancient mind-body that was discussed early in the book (around chapter 1 and 2) was a version of psychophysical parallelism that Kohler called isomorphism. This means that for a given experience, the underlying brain processes mirror the experience in some fashion. This does not mean that the brain actually processes the duplicate experience, rather there is a functional isomorphism between the two experiences, the actual experience and the mirrored experience.
The third section I found interesting in the chapter was the section about Kurt Lewin as a social psychologist. To his colleagues, Lewin might have been known as a developmental psychologist, but his self-identity in the discipline of psychology was much broader, as reflected in his many research topics over the years. These latter studies is the reason why is considered one of the pioneers of modern social psychology. Lewin was especially interested in the differences in the consequences of leadership styles. The basic procedure here was to create different environments for five-person groups of ten-year old boys who were given various craft making projects to complete. The main experiment contrasted three different leadership styles; authoritarian, democratic, and laissez-faire. Each group of boys experienced all three styles and their behavior was dramatically influenced by how they were guided. Under the authoritative rule, the boys became submissive, those under the laissez-faire group spent most of their time trying to decide what to do, and those in the democratic leader group became cohesive as a group and were motivated and completed the task in a timely manner. It was noted that those who had to switch from authoritarian rule to democratic rule had a difficult time overcoming the effects of being told what to do.
Honestly I did not find anything aversive in this chapter. I think the reason behind that is because some of the chapter I had already learned in sensation and perception, the things that I did not know, or the things that were elaborated on were interesting. I think the thing to note that is most useful in understanding the history of psychology is the idea that these gestalt psychologists promoted an approach to psychology that objected deeply prevailing analytical strategies that characterized certain aspects of other psychologies such as Titchenerian structuralism, American behaviorism, and any theory derived from British principles. Gestaltists argued that understanding the mind and behavior could not be achieved by trying to dissect conscious into its basic stimulus response units. As discussed before, this chapter answers the question between atomism versus wholism issue that was raised in Chapter 2, and it describes the impact that gestalt psychology had on American psychology as a whole. I would like to learn more about Kohler’s insight on the apes.
One topic that I had found interesting was Duncker’s study of college students. I found it interesting because of the way he conducted his research. He had asked college students to solve problems by thinking out loud, and then try to derive patterns from their speech. What he had found from this procedure is that many college kids used creative thinking to solve the problem. For example, they would use objects in different ways in what they were intended or thought to be intended for. When he had conducted his candle experiment to move a candle on a wall with a number of objects, including a box and several tacks, in their toolbox without scorching the wall, the subjects were supposed to use the box in a non-typical way as a platform instead of a container. He had described people that were stuck in using objects in only a conventional way to have functional fixedness. In his tumor study, subjects were supposed to figure out how to destroy a tumor without destroying the surrounding tissue using radiation. He had concluded that a diagram that he had drawn up induced functional fixedness because it had shown only a single solution, where when he did not show subjects the diagram a higher percentage of them got it right.
I had also found Lewin’s Field Theory to be quite interesting because it had also reminded me of an ongoing debate in the criminology field, behavior resulting from nature or nurture. Lewin had believed that in order to understand a person’s behavior that “all forces acting” on that person need to be taken into account. His theory includes B = f(P,E): B being the behavior of the person at that particular moment, P is the person, and E is the environment. It is also important to note that E isn’t simply just their physical environment, but the environment how the person perceives it. So the person, and the perceived environment of the individual play an equal role in determining a person’s behavior. In the criminology field, it is an ongoing battle between the researchers trying to explain criminal behavior. Is it simply the nurture of the person’s external factors, or the perceived environment, that drives them to commit certain crimes? Is it the nature of the person, usually talked about in terms of biological, but in relation to this theory the person’s personality would be an example.
The last thing that I had found interesting was Kohler’s research on apes. I had found this interesting because it was a case where he was blatently proven wrong. He had disagreed with Thorndike’s theory of trial and error, and was set on proving his concept of insight in this experiement. In his experiment he had put two bamboo sticks in a cage with an ape, and put a banana out of reach outside of the cage. He had believed that his ape would use insight to put the two bamboo sticks together to be able to reach the banana. Disproving Koehler’s theory though, the ape had gone through a number of different tries to reach the banana until the failures reached the ape to come to the right conclusion. So summing it up, using the trial and error process he was able to reach the banana.
One topic that I disliked reading about in the chapter was Wertheimer’s perceptual problem of apparent motion. It say’s in the book that it can be explained using a simple example, but continued the rest of the paragraph to do so. He used lights in a darkened room to conduct is experiment and I thought there were a lot more interesting things in this chapter to read about.
One idea I had, like I had stated when discussing Lewin’s theory, is how much the criminology and psychology fields interact with each other. There have been a number of topics I have read about that may not directly relate to criminology, but are very similar and could be easily relatable. Not only Lewin’s theory, but another example could be social Darwinism and the poverty disparity not only defining the strong and the weak, but in a lot of cases the weak( or the lower SES people) make up more of the criminal population.
One thing I found interesting from the reading is was about Max Wertheimer’s work with apparent motion. This is idea of two sensory events occurs, but appearing as one continuous event. This is the basis for the creation of the motion picture industry. I found this interesting because I like to watch lots of different movies and if Max would not have had these findings I never would have been able enjoy watching a movie continuously.
I also enjoyed reading about Koffka and Kohler, the two people considered the co-founders of gestalt psychology. Kohler is known as the best gestalist. He did a lot of promotion of the gestalt ideas, which made him more well-known than others in the field of Gestalt psychology. He also did research of apes and their problem solving abilities. Koffka is known for introducing this field of psychology to America. He used these ideas in other areas like developmental psychology. He promoted gestalt ideas by speaking to people. He did lecture tours on campuses and gave a speech to the APA. They introduced a new approach and would not have gone through all of that work if they did not have a passion for what they believed in.
I liked reading about Lewin, one of the pioneers of modern social psychology. He liked to look at topics like prejudice, group influence, and leadership. He took a close look at what the effects are of different leadership styles are. He used three types for his experiment: authoritarian, democratic, and laissez-faire. He had each boy in the experiment experience all the types of leadership, but this failed because the boys became submissive. He strongly believed that scientists need to get outside of the laboratory and try to solve real-world problems. I was interesting because this psychologist experienced failure, but he still kept trying and is an influential person in psychology.
I found reading about the origins and early development of Gestalt psychology the least interesting. There were a lot of names and information about different people in this small section of the chapter, so it was hard for me to take in and really actively read.
I think Kohler’s Mentality of Apes study will be the most useful thing to take from this chapter. We do a lot of studies of apes because they are one of animals most like the human species. By knowing and understanding this study, we can see and realize when we read other studies where it all started after. We can also compare the similarities because most psychology studies done with apes focus on mental tasks, like problem solving.
This chapter relates to previous chapters because a lot of the people that were discussed studied under psychologists we have learned about previously. Another reason like Kohler criticized Thorndike’s mechanical trial-and-error explanation. This is important because in order to understand what that means you need to know what that is. Plus it is useful to know more about Thorndike to understand why he came up with the explanation he did and compare the two to see who you believe is right.
I would like to learn more about what research have been done since Lewin’s studies on leadership on adolescent boys. It would be interesting to be if some changes to the study cause dramatically change the results to have a correlation of some sort.
This chapter made me think about how many things our brain in control of and affects. We use it to help with perception, problem solving, our senses, and so much more. It is crazy to think it isn’t bigger considering all the things it does for us. It also made me think about how well-educated everyone in our chapter readings always are. Many of them have doctorates, which is so impressive. I always thought about how much time it takes to do research and experiments, yet now their work gives summarized into a section of chapter in a book on the history of psychology.
The first area I found interest in was on the principles of perceptual organization. I found it interesting because I can remember back to my childhood, experiencing many of the stimuli, like reversible figures and having fun trying to decipher them. I find it interesting as well that Wertheimer considered the task to break proximity impossible. Looking at the dots in figure 9.5(a) I feel like I am able to organize them as Wertheimer considers impossible but maybe this is just a trick of perception.
The second area I found interesting was on Kohler and his insight in ape’s research. My initial interest came from the, “Planet of the Apes,” feel of the section, but I think the results of insight were also intriguing. It almost shows how research can be twisted if you want to believe something badly enough. In the experiment with Sultan and the bananas the first account of the situation makes you think that the ape has very close to human level insight while later accounts show that sultan was not so quick to discover the solution. I think this section shows in short how history is recorded as it is wanted to be perceived.
The final area I found most interesting was on action research by Lewin. Part of what interested me was the familiarity I have with the idea of his work based on my attendance of a leadership and violence prevention class. The idea that in knowing how humans think and respond we should be able to help ourselves think and do the right things.
The part I found least interesting was on the origins of Gestalt psychology. This partially could be due to the fact that I was a little lost on the subject until I had the chance to see many of the tools and pictures used in this area of research.
I found that the section on insight in apes built most on the previous chapters, mostly on chapter 7. Kohler build on Thorndike’s puzzle boxes by allowing the animal subjects to observe the whole situation instead of just part of it. I do wonder what the results would be of the previous study used by Thorndike if apes were used as subjects. I think that the amount of repetitions needed would be much less.
The area I would like to research more on is, “action research.” I feel like it is very useful in understanding psychologies history as well as improving our social situation. For psychologies history this marks the spot where we stop simply looking at behavior, but we start trying to improve it. I want to look more into it because I feel like there is a lot of good that can come from action research. While reading this chapter most of my ideas were also centered on action research. Mainly I know that after taking the leadership and violence prevention class I have more confidence in how I should respond to different situations.
After reading chapter 9, I found three things to be especially interesting. These included; how Jewish professors had to flee Germany, figure-ground segregation, and the Von Restorff effect. The rise of Nazi Germany created problems for many Jewish professors at the time, and academic freedom was diminished. Many professors in German universities were dismissed, based solely on that they were Jewish. The book even mentions how Albert Einstein was dismissed from his position, because he was Jewish. In response to the argument of Germany losing many great minds, Hitler just said that Germany could simply do without science for a while. Due to these dismissals of these scientific leaders, psychology was destroyed for a generation in this country. I think this is interesting, because I had never heard of Einstein being dismissed from his job. It is crazy to think that Hitler was will to sacrifice so much knowledge to create the perfect race when these scientists and psychologists had such developed minds. You would think that he would want these people in his country to reproduce and create smart offspring. I also found the concept of figure-ground-segregation to be interesting. This concept was first described by Edgar Rubin in 1915. Rubin believed that figures have several distinct features that help them to be distinguished from their backgrounds. Also, he says that the image’s border helps to distinguish itself from the background, and says that this image is a powerful one. The figure is more memorable to someone, because it has more substance than its background. The text gives an example of an occasion where it may be difficult to distinguish between foreground and background. The book shows a picture of a white cup with a black background, but if you look at it in a different way, the image is of two all-black men’s profiles facing each other. Only one perception can occur at a time, and it can be difficult when the foreground and background is interchangeable. This is interesting to me, because I find it cool how the mind can play tricks on you. When I first looked at the image, I saw the cup. Then after examining it for a few seconds, the image of the men popped out at me. I think it would be interesting to see how many people see the cup or the men first. The third thing that I found to be interesting was the Von Restorff effect. This effect, from Hedwig Von Restorff, says that a stimulus will be remembered better any time it stands out than the other information. I find this effect interesting, because I can relate it to my everyday life. For example, I am more likely to remember something unique or out of the ordinary than something that I see on an everyday basis. Even though I found Hitler’s laws preventing Jewish professors from keeping their jobs during World War II to be interesting, I also didn’t like that part of the chapter. Germany had made such great strides in the field of psychology, and the field had basically originated there. He was willing to risk putting his country’s psychology field at a stand-still in order to “purify” the German race. Gestaltists were even influenced by the German philosophical tradition of Kant.
One thing that I found to be most useful in understanding the history of psychology was how Max Wertheimer was the founder of Gestalt psychology. Wertheimer was intrigued by the problem of perpetual motion. Through his research, he came up with many theories to help describe this phenomenon. An example would be perceived motion known as the phi phenomenon.
This chapter builds off other chapters, because it speaks mostly of German psychologists, as previous other chapters. For example, other German psychologists that we have covered so far in the book are Munsterberg, Wundt, Berger, Fechner, and Weber.
One topic that I would like to gain more insight on and that I had ideas for is Kohler’s research on apes. I want to know why he chose to study the apes instead of people and how he thought up of the situation he put the apes in. I thought he study was interesting, because he was trying to challenge Thorndike’s puzzle boxes.
There was a lot in this chapter I found interesting and a lot I found boring. One of the first things I thought was interesting while reading was about was how Germany lost its place of importance in leading psychology because of the Nazis. I guess it had not occurred to me and I felt very silly for not having thought about that before. Many of the leading psychologists and scientists were Jewish so this meant that Germany lost them. I thought the quote by Hitler was so stupid but it stuck with me, “If the dismissal of Jewish scientists means the annihilation of contemporary German science then we shall do without it for a few years!” Wow, the word choice like annihilation showed how he thought about things, very violent and also his understatement of losing out for a few years! It really made me upset, I am sure so much was lost even though many were able to relocate to the United States.
The second subject to make me linger and not rush through reading was Kurt Koffka. I thought he was interesting first because he studied brain injuries on soldiers from WWI and I am interested in using brain injury to study the brain. I like that it is sort of a puzzle you have to reconstruct. I also thought it was nice that he decided to teach at Smith College- an all-female university. I also like developmental psychology and he wrote The Growth of Mind on that subject.
The close up on Kohler was interesting. It was to me not a very good case for him being a spy. While espionage has this sort of romantic mystique I really just think he, his wife and kids lived on some lonely island studying apes- which to me seemed fun enough! I like primates/comparative psychology and the Canary Islands have been a place I’ve always wanted to go. There was no real proof of him being a spy, just some lonely old man wanting to tell stories and be listened to I am guessing. And of course Lewin’s time in Iowa was cool. I am from Iowa City and did not know about that.
The stuff I found least interesting had to do with perception which I realize is huge in Gestalt (so maybe Gestalt is not my favorite). That gets to be too technical and close to math for me, there were even formulas in Lewins section. It is hard for me to understand and I do not like to feel stupid. I have had enough of physiology. The gestalt organizing principles were not my favorite.
One very important thing I learned, and it embarrasses me to say, but I thought before this Gestalt was someone’s last name. I have taken several psychology classes and think I am a good student but somehow failed to learn about this. I knew it was important but not how or why- but now I do! Also, going back to Nazis in Germany, that is a very important part of background information. It was important to learn that Gestalt came to the US and was met by behaviorism and it never really took over in the states.
We are learning not only about different time periods but how they had different popular schools of psychology. Many of them had to happen and then have flaws for the others to be created to better the old theories. Wundt was a building block for this chapter. Kohler also sought to better study animals than had Thorndike.
I would like to learn more about Kohler’s time studying the apes. Maybe if there is more info on his wife Thekla. The book made her sound like she did a lot but did not get much credit.
I thought a lot about the time period. I was thinking about WWI, WWI and the great depression and how they shaped psychology. I thought about how they had more PHDs graduating than there were jobs during the depression and how that might be similar to now, too many college grads and not enough jobs (e.g. lawyers). I also thought about Lewin in Iowa City, my hometown, and wondered where he liked to go and those restaurants mentioned are not around anymore but where were they located? I thought about the dumb Nazis a lot, another of their negatives was their effect of psychology.
One topic that interested me was Max Wertheimer’s interest in thinking and problem solving. Wertheimer wrote about in his book called “Productive Thinking,” topics from “how children learn arithmetic to how Einstein developed his theory of relativity.” Wertheimer disapproved with the traditional method to teach math, which consisted of memorization of the formulas and rules without having them look into the actual concepts and meanings of the symbols that were being used in the teachings. Max Wertheimer did a study on students to see how productive their thinking was, and he concluded that the students would be “more productive thinkers” if they understood the actual concepts of the symbols they were memorizing. I thought it was interesting that symbols weren’t really explained to the students when they were learning the materials. They would be confused when shown a different image for the same concept, because it was shown in a way they hadn’t learned, which they would have known if they actually understood the meaning behind the different symbols to show how they can be used. I just thought it was interesting that it was taught without the meanings in the first place, that would be so confusing, and I found parts of math to be confusing the way it was when it was explained so I can’t even imagine what the children felt like trying to learn that.
Another topic I found interesting was where it told that Hedwig von Restorff found that if people used and learned lists of three numbers in a series of syllables, people were more likely to remember the three-digit number series rather than the syllables. It told that “anytime a stimulus in an information array stands out in some fashion, it will be recalled more easily than the remaining information.” This interests me, because now that I think about this, it is easier for me to remember numbers in a series than it is for me to remember syllables.
I also found Kurt Lewin’s field theory interesting. The text book told how he gave more empirical research than the “three gestalt founders combined.” “He believed that understanding a person’s behavior required knowing about all the forces acting on a person at a given moment.” He called the space where a person functions the “life space.” I think this is very true, because later the text goes on to talk about how the characteristics of the way a person is behaving and the features of the psychological environment where the person is behaving are a joined function, in other words, the environment can affect the way a person is behaving.
I didn’t like how the chapter didn’t really talk about Kohler and the things that he did. He is a pretty well-known psychologist and much of the things he did was not mentioned except how he “partially failed” with Sultan. I wish it would have talked more about him.
One topic I found most useful in this chapter was where it talked about perception, because it really does matter whether a person perceives something through their views or the actual perceptions of what is really going on at the time it is happening.
It is building on to chapters by continuing on with developmental and behavioral theories and approaches. It also continues on with Thorndike again like it did the last chapter.
I would like to learn more about Hedwig von Restorff’s study on number series versus syllables, and want to learn more about the study, because I can relate to this, because I am more able to remember numbers rather than trying to remember syllables.
I had a few ideas while reading this chapter. I agree with Max Wertheimer’s discovery of memorizing symbols, and actually teaching the concepts of them. I thought it was wired that children were only taught to memorize symbols, instead of being taught what they actually mean. Another idea I had was how much I realized that Hedwig von Restorff’s findings about number series works for me, I find it easier for myself to remember series of numbers rather than syllables. Also I agree with Lewin’s field theory, and that the environment does have an effect on the way a person behaves.
While reading chapter nine one of the first things that became interesting to me was the theme of Nazi Germany in many of the lives of the psychologists we read about. It was frightening to me that some of them, like Wertheimer, were forced to leave Germany because they were Jewish and had to gather their families and belongings and try to start again in the United States. It is complete ludicrous to me that Hitler got to power and had that control but I also enjoyed hearing the stories of some psychologists such as Kohler, standing up for education and other Jewish educators even though he knew the risk he was taking. Another thing that caught my interest in this chapter was the story about Kohler also being a German spy while he was living in Tenerife for several years. It is pretty fascinating to hear those kind of secrets in history and try to discover if they are true or not. The only valuable piece of evidence against Kohler however is the radio in his laboratory, which seems necessary to have if you are living somewhat isolated on an island. Also, for someone that would write an article against Hitler and also resign from his position at the university because he wouldn’t sign a loyalty oath for Hitler it doesn’t seem likely that he would help be a spy in the war. The third piece of information I found interesting in this chapter was learning about gestalt psychology. I had heard the term before but hadn’t learned much more about it besides the definition. I like the way the form of psychology is approached, which is by simple observation. I thought the test about lights A and B blinking on the left side, then the right side, then the middle was very interesting in that our mind simply decides that there are two lights that we see, not one light or three lights. We think we see that the two lights on opposite sides have moved to the middle light at the same time and overlapped one another.
I supposed the topic that I found to be least interesting was reading about leadership styles by Lewin’s research. I am guessing it is because it seems a little bit common sense to me, but that is probably because these ideas came about one hundred years ago or so. I think gestalt therapy in this chapter will be the most important thing to me learning about the history of psychology because it is a pretty important form of psychology that is still taught and discussed in classrooms today. A lot of experiments that were done with gestalt therapy in the past seem simple enough but are pretty fascinating, even looking at the classic photo of the vase which could also be two faces is a little mind blowing.
One topic from this chapter I would like to learn a little more about is the evidence against Kohler for being a spy during WWI. I don’t really want to learn about it for any other reason besides that it seems like a pretty crazy secret and very sneaky of him and I would love to find more clues, whichever direction they point to. I thought a lot about Nazi Germany in this chapter and what it would have been like to have close friends and colleagues being run out of their jobs and country. I would like to believe I would have been as brave as Kohler and could have published and anti-Hitler article or left the country instead of signing a loyalty contract.
I think that this chapter builds on the other chapters because it discusses a lot of famous psychologists that have only been briefly mentioned beforehand and now we get to learn a lot more details about their lives and contributions.
After reading chapter 9, I found three things to be especially interesting. These included; how Jewish professors had to flee Germany, figure-ground segregation, and the Von Restorff effect. The rise of Nazi Germany created problems for many Jewish professors at the time, and academic freedom was diminished. Many professors in German universities were dismissed, based solely on that they were Jewish. The book even mentions how Albert Einstein was dismissed from his position, because he was Jewish. In response to the argument of Germany losing many great minds, Hitler just said that Germany could simply do without science for a while. Due to these dismissals of these scientific leaders, psychology was destroyed for a generation in this country. I think this is interesting, because I had never heard of Einstein being dismissed from his job. It is crazy to think that Hitler was will to sacrifice so much knowledge to create the perfect race when these scientists and psychologists had such developed minds. You would think that he would want these people in his country to reproduce and create smart offspring. I also found the concept of figure-ground-segregation to be interesting. This concept was first described by Edgar Rubin in 1915. Rubin believed that figures have several distinct features that help them to be distinguished from their backgrounds. Also, he says that the image’s border helps to distinguish itself from the background, and says that this image is a powerful one. The figure is more memorable to someone, because it has more substance than its background. The text gives an example of an occasion where it may be difficult to distinguish between foreground and background. The book shows a picture of a white cup with a black background, but if you look at it in a different way, the image is of two all-black men’s profiles facing each other. Only one perception can occur at a time, and it can be difficult when the foreground and background is interchangeable. This is interesting to me, because I find it cool how the mind can play tricks on you. When I first looked at the image, I saw the cup. Then after examining it for a few seconds, the image of the men popped out at me. I think it would be interesting to see how many people see the cup or the men first. The third thing that I found to be interesting was the Von Restorff effect. This effect, from Hedwig Von Restorff, says that a stimulus will be remembered better any time it stands out than the other information. I find this effect interesting, because I can relate it to my everyday life. For example, I am more likely to remember something unique or out of the ordinary than something that I see on an everyday basis. Even though I found Hitler’s laws preventing Jewish professors from keeping their jobs during World War II to be interesting, I also didn’t like that part of the chapter. Germany had made such great strides in the field of psychology, and the field had basically originated there. He was willing to risk putting his country’s psychology field at a stand-still in order to “purify” the German race. Gestaltists were even influenced by the German philosophical tradition of Kant.
One thing that I found to be most useful in understanding the history of psychology was how Max Wertheimer was the founder of Gestalt psychology. Wertheimer was intrigued by the problem of perpetual motion. Through his research, he came up with many theories to help describe this phenomenon. An example would be perceived motion known as the phi phenomenon.
This chapter builds off other chapters, because it speaks mostly of German psychologists, as previous other chapters. For example, other German psychologists that we have covered so far in the book are Munsterberg, Wundt, Berger, Fechner, and Weber.
One topic that I would like to gain more insight on and that I had ideas for is Kohler’s research on apes. I want to know why he chose to study the apes instead of people and how he thought up of the situation he put the apes in. I thought he study was interesting, because he was trying to challenge Thorndike’s puzzle boxes.
It was interesting to read about the German psychologists who who started to question all of the mainstream views of experience and consciousness. It takes some balls to stand up to established theories like that. Form theory is one of the concepts they came up and it basically claims that the definition or explanation of something can not be achieved by looking at the individual elements alone. For example, you can't determine how many wins a football team will have simply by looking at each individual player. The team chemistry is a force that produces an over all pattern of connections between teammates that cannot be defined by looking at each player alone. Similarly, consciousness or experience cannot be explained by simply analyzing each instance of sensory input.
I struggled with the difference between geographical environment and behavioral environment. The geographical environment is the world “as it is” and the behavioral environment is how we perceive it. The book used an example of a frozen lake being perceived as an “open plane”. This lead to the theory of “life space” which states that if, in fact, environmental and behavioral environments do not match, two people in the same geographical environment could perceive it differently.How do we define the world “as it is”? If someone who is colorblind experiences a blade of grass to be grey, who is to say that isn’t? Many of us perceive it to be green but does the majority opinion automatically become the definition?
The concept of productive thinking was intriguing. It is confusing to read about such a concept in a history book because it seems like it hasn’t been applied to education. Max Wertheimer understood that people need to have a grasp on the core ideas behind something in order to understand it and apply it instead of just going through the motion of it. Consider a factory that makes a product on a line. If a factory worker knows where parts come from, how they fit together, the purpose the product will serve, the motivation of the people pushing the product, etc etc he can better understand how to improve the product and apply the information, possibly, to develop his own product. But we can’t teach people about all of that! No, if we want people controlled and reliant, we cannot let them understand what it takes to actually do things on their own.
This chapter was pretty interesting and eye opening. I can’t say there was too much that I wasn’t interested in. Some of the biographical information was a little boring but whatever it’s necessary.
This chapter just builds on theories proposed in other chapters. When starting from scratch, humans come up with theories that match for the moment and go from there. There were clear findings that supported theories which broke down consciousness into elements in order to understand it. But people are never happy with conclusions. No, through study of these theories and finding conflicting results, people were able to determine that consciousness may be related to experience as a whole. Theories will be proven and disproven on and on, forever and so forth.
I would like to know more about why productive thinking isn’t encouraged in every aspect of our lives. People are too dumb to realize they need to think on their own! If this kind of productive thinking helps people to understand and apply things to improve everyone’s experience why aren’t we all thinking productively! Why do most of us just accept what we’re told and run with the majority?
This chapter led me to think about the courage it takes to formulate and publicize a theory. It takes an incredible amount of passion to spend time with a question in life and find the holes in previous theory. It takes even more confidence to justify a theory to people. People need a damn good reason to change their thinking. I also wonder why a lot of the findings in this chapter aren’t emphasized in a more public manner. Why don’t companies treat every employee like a CEO? Because the guy or guys on top want a multi-million dollar vacation home?
One of the things about studying the history of Psychology is that you get into a bit more about the individuals themselves. Oftentimes when learning about various Psychologists and their work we forget that they had a multi-dimensional personality that is there was more to them then their scientific findings. Reading about Kohler is on such instance where while I knew a bit about his study of apes I was not aware of the seemingly seedier aspects of his life. The accusations of being a spy, that he really didn’t work with the apes as closely as we sometimes think and especially the amount of non-credited research done by his first wife. He had a story that rivals some modern day soap operas!
I have always found the principles of perceptual organization to be fascinating. I remember looking at the cube waiting for my brain to switch so that the front of the box seemed to flip. It is one of those fun things to do when learning how the brain works. It is interesting how we are able to separate backgrounds from figures.
Finally I thought the works of Kurt Lewin were very interesting. I really liked his ideas about action research. He thought that Psychology should do more than explain that it should be able to bring about productive change. Instead of simply discovering how types of leaders received varying degrees of positive results he tried to show how to apply this to increase productivity in the workplace.
There is a lot about Gestalt psychology that is not the most interesting to me personally. Things like the perception of lights and tones can make my eyes glaze over.
I wondered a lot about the first wife of Kohler and thought it would be interesting to learn more about her if possible.
This chapter seemed to show progression of the history. At first glance it seemed to be not related but after getting into it more I was able to see how the chapter showed the evolution of various fields of psychology through Gestalt psychology.
Gestalt psychology has its roots in physics, by a pioneer named Max Planck. Gestalt psychology essentially takes an image and breaks it down into what it is. You know those illusions that look like they’re two or three images within one? Gestalt psychology suggests that we can pick out each pattern to create a new picture. This seems like a theory that any introductory student to psychology would know, but it’s fascinating all the same. It’s interesting how we are not only able to pick out each piece but understand what it’s supposed to be.
This concept is called prägnanz, or good figure. This means that the way we perceive an image mirrors reality. So that picture that looks like two faces or a goblet is actually neither, it’s the way we process and compare it to reality. This concept cam be used outside of such reversible photos. Another technique to these illustrations is called closure. For example, the book has an image that looks like a triangle with a rectangle bisecting it in the middle. But, with a little more thought, it also looks like a rectangle with a trapezoid and a smaller triangle.
Isomorphism is a concept created by Wolfgang Köhler. My understanding is it is when the brain recognizes to similar, or identical, images and doesn’t fire additional neurons to react to the image.
It looks like in this chapter, Köhler also uses Thorndike’s puzzle box as a basis for some of his experiments on insight with apes.
One interesting topic in this chapter was Kohler’s experiment with apes in regards to problem solving. In this experiment Kohler challenged Thorndike’s puzzle box experiments, which concluded that learning and problem solving was a process of trial and “accidental success”. Kohler believed that problem solving was more of a mechanical, step by step process. His most famous experiment comes from a chapter in The Mentality of Apes, which presented a problem in which bananas lying outside a cage were to be retrieved by an ape within the cage. This famous experiment portrays a thoughtful animal that carefully examined the elements of the situation and suddenly grasped the insight to solve the problem. However, in reality, the ape was slow in figuring out the solution and tried several strategies that failed. Therefore, the ape showed some degree of insight but also behaved in a way that supported Thorndike’s original findings (trial and error). Although Kohler’s research didn’t prove Thorndike’s conclusions wrong, it did introduce a new way of thinking about learning and problem solving which expanded beyond puzzle boxes and mazes.
Another interesting figure in this chapter was Kurt Lewin. He didn’t consider himself a gestalt psychologist, but he respected it and recognized the importance of it when investigating certain fields. A major difference between Gestaltists and Lewin was the he focused more on motivation and goal-directed behavior rather than perception, learning, and cognition. Lewin believed that the person is a “complex energy system” in which individual’s actions can be predicted based on needs being felt, the strength of those needs, and the various obstacles in life space. When all needs are satisfied, the individual is said to be in state of equilibrium. This means that the creation of a need also creates a disequilibrium, which motivates a person to satisfy it in order to return to their desired equilibrium. This was interesting was interesting to read about because it correlates to what I’ve been learning in my motivation and emotion class.
Another interesting topic covered in this chapter was Lewin as a social psychologist. Although Lewin is often identified as a developmental psychologist, his theory and research on topics such as group influence and leadership have deemed him one of the pioneers of modern social psychology. The constant theme in Lewin’s work was using science as a means of bringing about productive social change. He argued that psychology must do more than just explain behavior by stating it must “be equally concerned with discovering how people can change their ways so that they learn to behave better.” For instance, during his years in Iowa he was involved in several studies designed to solve real-world problem, several of which involved group processes.
A topic that was less interesting to me was apparent motion. I understand the concept and the significance of the findings, but it was such a simple concept and I felt like the text might have gone into too much detail about it – which in turn made something simple seem more difficult to understand than it actually is.
The most useful topic in this chapter that helped me better understand the history of psychology was the development of Gestalt theory and how it relates to psychology. Although it originated as a study of perceptual phenomenon, it expanded and influenced other fields such as developmental as social psychology. It is also important to note that it had an impact on American psychology after it was introduced by Koffka and Kohler.
The chapter continues to build on previous chapters by taking old theories and findings and looking at them from a new perspective using new psychological methods. For instance, the Gestaltists were influenced by the German philosophical tradition of Kant, which was covered in chapter 2. Another example is Kohler challenging Thorndike’s puzzle box experiments (chapter 7) in an attempt to provide a better understanding of problem solving.
I would like to learn more about Lewin’s time in Iowa. Although the text discusses his time in Iowa, I think it would be interesting to dig deeper and find out more (Why Iowa?). I also remembering thinking it was pretty cool that Iowa played somewhat of a role in the history of psychology, which is virtually what made me want to learn more about it.
Chapter nine was an overview of Gestalt psychology. I found the following three topics to be of the most interest to me:
1.) The absolutely most interesting thing of this chapter, by far, was that Kurt Lewin had an extensive background at the University of Iowa. Kurt formed a team similar to the one he had back in Germany in Iowa City at the Iowa Child Welfare Station. Lewin had a profound impact on the Universities understanding and reputation for the psychology of children. One of the most prolific child studies was done in Iowa City by Lewin and his colleagues. I think this is so interesting because it took place in Iowa City and that Lewin, along with his students regularly met at a local restaurant for their club meetings (“Hot-Air-Club”). Is this restaurant still around?
2.) Wolfgang Kohler and his primate research at the Canary Islands was the next most interesting thing. I thought it was very genius of him, along with his theory, of allowing the entirety of a problem to be seen before trying to solve it, which allowed for abstract thought on how to go about solving the problem at hand. Wolfgang tested this problem-solving theory on primates, especially one in particular, named Sultan. The famous experiment was that of Sultan trying to get a banana that was just out of reach. The primate was given two sticks that individually, were not long enough to reach the banana, but once put together to form one stick, were long enough. It took Sultan awhile, but eventually he got it. I found this experiment fascinating and I also found it intriguing that Kohler was “somewhat accused” of espionage.
3.) The third interesting thing I read about in chapter nine was the Zeigarnik effect. The discovery was made by one of Lewin’s students, Bluma Zeigarnik (hence Zeigarnik effect). In short, the Zeigarnik effect states that people have better memories regarding incomplete tasks rather than ones they actually complete. This is so interesting to me because I just don’t understand it. I don’t understand how someone who isn’t allowed to finish what they are doing/studying is able to have a better memory about the task when compared to people who are allowed to finish the task.
The least interesting thing of the chapter for me definitely had to be found in the section on the “Principles of Perceptual Organization”. To be specific, Wertheimer’s terms of proximity, similarity, and good continuation. I found this to be the “least” interesting because it was a hard concept to completely grasp. I also found the figures used to explain his theories to be confusing. Just not interesting to me.
I think that this chapter helped me understand the history of psychology better by elaborating on Gestalt psychology. I mean, we look at psychology in so many ways. The mind/brain is such a hard thing to measure, let alone understand. It’s crazy to say that we will invent a machine that can read/understand the mind. We have to look at things abstractly, and come to logical explanations for certain behaviors. While the laboratory is completely necessary, not all facets of psychology can be covered within one.
This chapter builds on the previous chapters by moving things from strict laboratory settings, to a more logical and abstract thought perspective. The chapter almost combines the two ways of research. It emphasizes the importance of not only looking at individual elements, but at the whole picture of a phenomenon.
I would like to learn more about the Primate research that Kohler did regarding problem-solving. Also, Lewin’s experiences and contributions to the University of Iowa.
Idea:
-Whether or not Gestalt psychology would’ve been more well-known and further examined if it wasn’t for Nazi Germany’s influence on many great scientists eventually fleeing to the United States (was in great depression upon arrival).
I liked reading about Rubin and his research on perception with the figure-ground segregation. On one page I recognized figure 9.4 with the illustrations of reversible figure-ground. I always thought of those pictures to be interesting because sometimes you see one thing and then look at it again and see something else. Kind of like the picture they have of the Pittsburgh Zoo & PPG Aquarium with it looks like just a tree at first and then you look a little closer and see the gorilla and lion too. It’s mind boggling in a good way.
I liked reading about Kohler’s work with Sultan, the ape, and experimenting how an animal could retrieve food if they see the whole problem field, unlike Thorndike. Sultan figured out how to get the bananas quickly just as Kohler suspected with his research on a term he used: insight. Although Sultan found out how to get the bananas, he did not do it in a timely fashion or without some error, proving Thorndike’s theory not to be completely flawed with trial and error.
It was cool to see Lewin used in both the developmental area of psychology and the social area also. He found that leadership styles caused different behavioral reactions from adolescent boys in a study. Like having an autocratic leader made the boys submissive and failed to push themselves and take no genuine interest in what they were doing. He found the boys became aggressive as the leader wasn’t around. He experimented with the boys with authoritarian, democratic, and laissez-faire leadership styles in which they reacted differently to each one. In the end, his results found democratic leaders were the most effective for adolescent boys.
I think the most useful information in this chapter was about Gestalt’s principles. Each section talks about his principles and how psychologists/philosophers used them in their research and discovered many different things. For example, Hedwig von Restorff found that people learned lists with a three-digit number associated in a group of nonsense syllables, the number would almost always be remembered more than the syllables. Her findings were known as the Von Restorff effect. She used the gestalt figure-ground theory in how the number provided a sharp figure against the background of nonsense syllables.
This chapter relates to chapter 7 with Kohler’s research on problem solving and challenging Thorndike’s puzzle box experiments. Kohler didn’t agree with Thorndike’s idea of problem solving being a step-by-step process, but he thought people could see what the problem is and revamp the components of the problem to find the solution. He said animals couldn’t do that because they couldn’t see the whole problem field. Without Thorndike’s work, Kohler might not have done his research with gestalt principles.
The part I found least interesting in this section was Wertheimer’s work on apparent motion. Thinking about two lights actually being one light in a darkened room was kind of boring to think about because it’s almost like a mind game. In my mind, I just think well it could be two circles of light or just one, but I don’t think having to go beyond those ideas of our perception is very interesting at all.
My only idea was about Lewin and his work with adolescent boys and leadership styles. I wonder how adolescent girls would’ve reacted and if the results would be similar. It’s been said girls are usually more mature at that age and take directions better than their boy classmates and I just wonder how their results would’ve come up. I would like to learn more about Lewin and his research in both developmental and social psychology.
In the reading I found Kohler very interesting as he was not only an outspoken psychologist, but also an anti- Nazi Activist. Kohler believed that Jewish professors being kicked out of schools in Germany were outlandish and spoke out against the notion. He also wrote one of the last published anti- Nazi articles which were scrutinized and his classes were closely watched. Kohler’s idea of having an insight was one of his more famous theories. He believed that through our own perception we find reconfigure problems until we find a solution. He also didn’t agree with Thorndike’s research on trial and error so he decided to test it with apes. He was proven wrong, but it showed other psychologists and scientists to question everything.
I thought that the differences between a geographical environment and a behavioral environment were also very interesting. This concept was very contradicting I believe as I think these two environment defiantly overlap and correspond with each other. In a behavior environment the surroundings a person is in directly affects the persons actions and in geographical environment is something that is occurring in an environment. I believe that a geographical environment such as when it is hot outside may cause someone to behave in a certain way. So I believe the two environments are very correlational normally.
The third thing I thought was very interesting was on Wertheimer and his theory on productive thinking in the classroom. Werheimer focused a lot of his work on education and improving children’s thinking. He believed that instead of having kids just memorize a bunch of theories in math for instance he had them learn the basic concepts first to learn much more efficiently. He tested this theory by teaching the kids two different ways and found the best way. This idea is based from previous psychologists work such as Thorndike and Dewey with problem solving and not leaving a child behind if they cannot grasp a subject. I think it would be very interesting to learn more about Kohler and more on his work that he did with apes and other findings. I also wondered if Kohler’s ideas were ever expanded on later by other psychologists.
Although I found this chapter very interesting in general, there were a few parts that really stuck out. The first part that was particularly interesting was the section on Gestalt psychology and perception. Reading this section brought me back to Psych 101. I remember the pictures shown in our book being shown in a Psych 101 class at ISU during the section on perception. “Figure-Ground” segregation is a concept that was first fully explained by Edgar Rubin in 1915. Although not a gestalt psychologist, many gestalt psychologists used his explanation to support their theories. According to his explanation, figures have certain features that make them distinguishable from their backgrounds. People tend to see the border as part of the figure. The images shown in our textbook are similar to the ones I remember in Psych 101. These images are actually two images, but certain people catch a certain perspective by instinct. My favorite is the Pittsburgh Zoo image, which can be seen in two ways: either as a tree that you would see in the jungle, or as a lion and a gorilla staring each other down. One must change their focus of attention in order to see the opposite.
Another part of the chapter that I found interesting was Köhler’s work with apes. Köhler did extensive research with apes on their ability to solve problems. The main study discussed in the reading was “the Making of Implements”. Köhler placed a chimp, “Sultan”, in a cage with bananas available outside of the cage. The chimp was left with two hollow pieces of bamboo. One piece of bamboo was just a bit wider than the other, which would allow the smaller of the two to be placed inside to make a longer stick. According to Köhler’s research, animals have to ability of “insight”, which in turn allowed this chimp to piece together the puzzle and put the bamboo sticks together to reach the bananas. Unfortunately for Köhler, he did not witness the chimp. Rather, the ape’s keeper witnessed the chimp experience “insight” and reach the bananas.
I also found the section “Wertheimer on Productive thinking” very interesting. I think that Wertheimer’s visit to the classroom may have contributed to the way that geometry is taught. It dealt primarily with how to find the area of a parallelogram. One day he came and they found the area of a parallelogram with the help of instructions by the teacher. The next day he returned with a different parallelogram. They were unable to find the area because they had only memorized certain things. The teacher was outraged, but Wertheimer suggested started out with simple concrete examples. As a speaker of a foreign language, it works the same way. You can memorize as many phrases as you want, but you will not truly speak the language until you are able to construct.
One part of the chapter that I found to be a bit dry was “Lewin’s Eggs”. My argument for this may lack justification, as the main reason I found it a bit dry was a lack of understanding. I read this particular passage multiple times, and I think I know what it was trying to say, but still not completely sure. This may be due to use of terminology.
I hope to learn more about Köhler’s experiments with the apes. I plan to research more on this topic for my topical blog. I think this was the most interesting because I think we underestimate the intelligence of animals.
The idea of apparent motion is really cool if you actually think about it. This reminds me of when you play with sparklers and you wave them around. It is as if there is a circle of light vs. one light moving around. This is also the same as having a lazer. Wertheimer didn’t like the term apparent motion because that sounded like it wasn’t being perceived when it actually was. He renamed this bizarre action phi phenomenon. Another thing that was interesting to read about was the perception. The figures in the book were fun to look at and see the different ways one image can be seen from different perspectives. This was all starting with Wertheimer. It was interesting learning about this “law of simplicity” or pragnanz. This is just names for what it means to look at something and think of the most logical way it looks closest to things we are familiar with instead of thinking of something as abstract. We tend to do this a lot in everyday life without even realizing it. It is pretty fascinating. Another interesting thing was how Kohler’s monkey was able to solve a problem by just thinking it over. He picked his smartest monkey and made two bamboo sticks too short to reach his food to see how long it would take the monkey to put the sticks together and make one long stick that was able to reach the food. This was like what we have previously read because this showed Thorndike’s trial and error theory. Although the monkey was smart and able to get it to work, it took a while and they just saw a lot of trial and error in the process.
What did you read in the chapter that you think will be most useful to in understanding the history of psychology?
I found the study that occurred in Iowa to be very interesting. I like that it occurring in Iowa City, which is where I great up. When I was a kid, I participated in several of the studies performed in the U or I study lab. It never seemed like a lab and I always thought it was fun because I was getting to go somewhere to play with new toys. The Lewin in Iowa study that was talked about in the book looked at child’s play from a developmental standpoint. This was interesting because it looked at psychological development and its relationship to problem solving. It may also be interesting because it makes me feel like when my mom had me participate in all of the different studies at U of I, I was actually helping with something amazing!
Perceptual organization was another interesting (and apparently popular) topic. The principles of perceptual organization looked at segregation from the group. There are many factors that play a role in our perception. Proximity, time, desire, categorizing, similarities, and a general desire to organize information all play an important role in our brain, perception, and organization of most things in our lives. That idea alone is FASCINATING!
Kohler’s Ape studies seemed interesting. I thought it was cool how he discussed the relationship between apes and humans and how related our species really are. I like how the problem solving studies reference the idea that “everything is a process”. This statement helps to connect the build off of previous information. It’s interesting that Kohler, like Thorndike, looked at animal processing and problem solving. They both also used their experiments to relate to humans.
I was not very interested in isomorphism. I didn’t like it because the chapter did a poor/vague job of explaining this. I didn’t much understand what was being discussed. I also didn’t think that it seemed to be all that interesting. I still don’t really understand what all I read about isomorphism or what its purpose is.
This chapter built on the previous chapters as it expanded on Thorndike. However, instead of expanding and building off of Thorndike, this chapter contradicts Thorndike by talking about Kohler and his disregarding for Thorndike’s ideas. This chapter builds on the previous chapters as it takes a new perspective on topics that have been talked about (such as Gestalt Theory and Thorndike). This chapter related most interestingly with the past chapters as it compares what we just learned about-Thorndike’s boxes-to Kohler’s Ape Studies.
While reading I had many ideas about problem solving. I wondered how you could test and generalize problem solving. I feel like there are many ways to test and solve a problem. There are also many things to take into consideration. I thought a great deal about the ape studies as I read and many of my ideas related. I feel like knowledge about problem solving is incredibly useful as it aid in a better understanding for our own actions and the actions of others. Also, it is useful to know the details of problem solving as to not make the same mistakes repeatedly and how to reach maximum success.
I would like to learn more about the Kohler and Thorndike relationship. I think I would like to learn more about their personal relationship most specifically. It would be curious to find out how they got along. I would also like to learn more about Kohler and his background/basis for his studies. Further, his views of our relationship to apes and how similar we are in terms of problem solving is fascinating to me (clearly as I talked about it throughout most of my post).