AP PSYCHOLOGY

PSYCHOLOGYS HISTORY APPROACHES

EARLY APPROACHES OF PSYCHOLOGY

Question [CLICK ON ANY CHOICE TO KNOW THE RIGHT ANSWER]
“The whole of the conscious experience is more meaningful than the sum of its parts” is most closely related to which historical school of thought?
A
Structuralism
B
Functionalism
C
Gestalt
D
Psychoanalytic
Explanation: 

Detailed explanation-1: -Gestalt psychologists emphasize that organisms perceive entire patterns or configurations, not merely individual components. The view is sometimes summarized using the adage, “the whole is more than the sum of its parts.” Gestalt psychology was founded on works by Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler, and Kurt Koffka.

Detailed explanation-2: -A core belief in Gestalt psychology is holism, or that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. 1 This school of psychology has played a major role in the modern development of the study of human sensation and perception.

Detailed explanation-3: -Structuralism was the first school of psychology and focused on breaking down mental processes into the most basic components. Researchers tried to understand the basic elements of consciousness using a method known as introspection.

Detailed explanation-4: -Gestalt theory originated in Austria and Germany as a reaction against the associationist and structural schools’ atomistic orientation (an approach which fragmented experience into distinct and unrelated elements). Gestalt studies made use instead of phenomenology.

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.

There is 1 question to complete.