AP PSYCHOLOGY

Detailed explanation-1: -Gestalt theory emphasizes that the whole of anything is greater than its parts. That is, the attributes of the whole are not deducible from analysis of the parts in isolation. The word Gestalt is used in modern German to mean the way a thing has been “placed, ” or “put together.”

Detailed explanation-2: -Psychological Gestalt theory would maintain that the whole is something else or something different than the sum of its parts. Merely adding up the component parts is meaningless compared with the “part-whole” relationship (SYNERGETICS: Explorations of Thinking.

Detailed explanation-3: -The classic principles of the gestalt theory of visual perception include similarity, continuation, closure, proximity, figure/ground, and symmetry & order (also known as prägnanz).

Detailed explanation-4: -Similarity. If proximity is due to position, then the Gestalt principle of similarity is how we piece information together by how similar objects are. For example, if there were five dogs of all different breeds and five cats of different breeds, then we would group them as cats and dogs.

Detailed explanation-5: -Gestalt psychology is a school of thought that seeks to understand how the human brain perceives experiences. It suggests that structures, perceived as a whole, have specific properties that are different from the sum of their individual parts.