Gestalt Psychology Versus Behaviorism example essay topic

the turn of the twentieth century, the field of Psychology found itself in a war between two contending theoretical perspectives: Gestalt psychology versus Behaviorism. With its roots within the United States, behaviorists in America were developing a theory that believed psychology should not be concerned with the mind or with human consciousness. Instead, behavior and the actions of humans would be the foremost concern of psychologists. Across the Atlantic, Gestalt psychology emerged by placing its criticism upon the methodology of introspection, especially by ways of disparaging behaviorism. Although the two theories originated on separate continents, their opposing ideas were brought together after World War II and continued to battle each other for almost half a century. An American psychologist, by the name of John B. Watson, is historically known for "selling" the idea of Behaviorism to other American psychologists during the 1900's.

Watson insisted that "psychology had failed to become an undisputed natural science because it was concerned with conscious processes that were invisible, subjective, and incapable of precise definition" (Hunt, page 256). Watson's position on human behavior was that it could be explained entirely in terms of reflexes, stimulus-response associations, and the effects of multiple reinforcements upon a person -- entirely excluding any mental processes. Watson's work was based on the experiments of Ivan Pavlov, who had studied animals' responses to conditioning. In Pavlov's most well-known experiment, he rang a bell each time he presented the dogs with food. Every time the dogs would hear the bell, their initial response would be to salivate because they believed that food was going to be offered. Pavlov then rang the bell without bringing food, yet the dogs continued to salivate.

In essence, the dogs had been "conditioned" to salivate at the sound of the bell. From this research, Pavlov concluded that humans also react to stimuli in the same way -- a finding that Watson would later emphasize. In modern psychology, behaviorism is most closely associated with B.F. Skinner, a man who molded his reputation by testing Watson's theories in the laboratory. Skinner's studies led him to believe that people operate on the environment to produce certain consequences, along with simply responding to their surrounding environment. His continued research led him to the development of "operant conditioning", the idea that we behave the way we do because this kind of behavior has had certain consequences in the past.

Like Watson, however, Skinner refuted the notion that human behavior is influenced by any action of the mind. As an alternative, our experience of reinforcements determines our behavior. During the time that behaviorism was the prevailing learned theory in America, across the sea in Europe, the Gestalt theory was taking form. While behaviorists emphasized the measurement of the outcome of learning without considering the mental processes that may have led to it, the forefathers of the Gestalt theory believed that there was more involved with learning than behaviorism allowed. They supported the notion that there was cognitive processing in the human brain that helped determine our actions and behaviors. The Gestalt theory hypothesizes that an individual's perception of stimuli has an affect on their response.

If two individuals are exposed to identical stimuli, their reactions to it would be different, depending on their past experiences. Max Wertheimer is considered, in many respects, to be the founder of Gestalt psychology. Wertheimer had his first breakthrough when he noticed the movement of blinking lights as you traveled at high speeds past them. Wertheimer conducted further research on this concept and developed what is known today as the phi phenomenon. The phi phenomenon is the notion that our perception of an experience is something different from the experience itself. In essence, Gestalt psychology focused its principles primarily on three main points: analyzing human perception rather than past learning; the importance of the brain in analyzing human actions; and that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

The war between Behaviorism and Gestalt psychology lies readily in how human behavior can be observed and scientifically recorded. Watson and his followers rejected the idea promoted by earlier psychologists that consciousness could be studied scientifically. The Behaviorists insisted that if psychology was to be a science, it must be limit itself to the study of overt behavior which could be scientifically recorded and measured. In other words, they felt that mental processes cannot be studied scientifically because these processes are private. The Behaviorist movement was satisfied to limit themselves to a study of muscular movements and other bodily activities which can be seen or detected with some kind of instrument.

Behaviorists insisted that all emotions are nothing more than intuitive responses-increased heart beat, increased tension throughout the body were just reactions to the surrounding environment. They were not convinced of the reality of mental states such as emotions. Even if such mental states did exist, the Behaviorists were not interested in studying them because they could not be studied scientifically. In their minds, psychology "would be based on reactions as specific and unvarying as those of chemistry and physics" (Hunt, page 262). In dealing with the question of nature versus nurture as an explanation for behavior, the Behaviorists came down strongly on the side of nurture.

They denied the existence of predetermined tendencies in human beings. Instead, they believed that it is the influence of the environment, through the process of learning, which explains human behavior. As Gestalt psychology came into existence during the early twentieth century, its theories reflected a retort against behaviorism. The Gestalt psychologists objected to several aspects of behaviorism's.

One aspect was the tendency of Behaviorists to try to understand behavior by breaking it down into several connected stimulus-response links. Also, Gestalt psychologists believed that psychology should continue to study conscious experience and not be limited to the study of overt behavior. Another aspect of Gestalt psychology was its emphasis on instinctive behavior (developed by Kurt Kof fka), as opposed to the mechanical stimulus-response learning model promoted by the Behaviorists. Instinctive behavior is "a group or pattern of reflexes... aimed at achieving a particular goal" (Hunt, page 301). For example, a baby chick will peck at objects that it "knows" are edible, yet the action is goal-oriented because it is driven by hunger, not "a mechanical and automatic response to the food" (Hunt, page 301). In an experiment with matured chickens performed by Wolfgang K"o hler in the early 1900's, the Gestalt theory was able to conclude that the chickens had learned to associate food with a relationship, not just with one specific color.

Behaviorists denied that the animals learned a relationship between the light and dark colors; yet they understood that an animal can be taught to select one of two different-colored objects. Fortunately for the Gestalt movement, K"o hler's experiment "showed conclusively that the relationship between the colors was indeed the primary fact the animals had learned, since they transposed it to a different situation" (Hunt, page 300). The findings exemplified the rule that nearly everything human and animals learn and perceive is in terms of relationships. The continual struggle between these two schools of psychology throughout the 1930's, 40's and 50's reflects the epic battle between rationalism and empiricism during the seventeenth century. The dispute between rationalism and empiricism takes place within epistemology, the branch of philosophy devoted to studying the nature, sources, and limits of knowledge. The disagreement between rationalist thought and empiricism primarily embodies the question of how humans gain knowledge.

In rationalism, pure reason is used in determining the fundamental natures of things and it is through human intuition and deductive reasoning that humans can obtain knowledge. Rationalists assert that there is an already existing innate knowledge, which is independent of experience, which God has bestowed upon every human individual. Descartes believed that, without innate ideas, no other information could be known. Furthermore, our innate knowledge is not learned through experience but is known intuitively through reason. Empiricists criticized the rationalists at this point, arguing that the matters of the innate ideas were in fact learned through one's previous experiences. They emphasized that large amounts of knowledge were gained through interaction with society-which occurs in early childhood and therefore cannot be considered intrinsic.

Moreover, empiricists accentuate the notion that knowledge stem from internal mental experiences (such as emotion and self-reflection). For empiricists, facts precede theories and it is plausible for one to be a fair, unbiased observer of "facts.".