Chapter 5. Sensation and Perception
Gestalt Principles of Perception
Jessica Motherwell McFarlane
Approximate reading time: 26 minutes
In the early part of the 20th century, Max Wertheimer published a paper demonstrating that individuals perceived motion in rapidly flickering static images — an insight that came to him as he used a child’s toy tachistoscope (a device used to display images for very short periods of time). Wertheimer, and his assistants Wolfgang Köhler and Kurt Koffka, who later became his partners, believed that perception involved more than simply combining sensory stimuli. This belief led to a new movement within the field of psychology known as Gestalt psychology. The word ”gestalt” literally means form or pattern, but its use reflects the idea that the whole is different from the sum of its parts. In other words, the brain creates a perception that is more than simply the sum of available sensory inputs, and it does so in predictable ways. Gestalt psychologists translated these predictable ways into principles by which we organise sensory information. As a result, Gestalt psychology has been extremely influential in the area of sensation and perception (Rock & Palmer, 1990).
According to Gestalt theorists, pattern perception, or our ability to discriminate among different figures and shapes, occurs by following the principles described above. You probably feel fairly certain that your perception accurately matches the real world, but this is not always the case. Our perceptions are based on perceptual hypotheses: educated guesses that we make while interpreting sensory information. These hypotheses are informed by a number of factors, including our personalities, experiences, and expectations. We use these hypotheses to generate our perceptual set. For instance, research has demonstrated that those who are given verbal priming produce a biased interpretation of complex ambiguous figures (Goolkasian & Woodbury, 2010).
“Closure” Puts the Magic in Comics
“This phenomenon of observing the parts but perceiving the whole has a name. It’s called closure. In our daily lives, we often commit closure, mentally completing that which is incomplete based on past experience.” ― Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
Scott McCloud shows us how our brains play a key role in getting the most out of comics. Think about how we naturally love to spot patterns and fill in blanks — that’s what Gestalt psychology is all about. In comics, this means we’re excel at linking together separate images and bits of story to make a smooth, flowing tale. It’s like our minds are built to connect the dots between comic panels, turning a collection of still pictures into a lively story.
Each picture in a comic doesn’t just standing alone in our minds; we see it as part of a bigger picture, influenced by what comes before and after it. Our knack for seeking order and continuity is what takes comics from being just a series of drawings to an engaging story. The real charm of comics is in this mix of what’s shown and what’s not. It’s our ability to ‘close the gaps’ in-between comics that turns these bits and pieces into a complete, awesome story. So, when you’re flipping through a comic, remember, it’s your brain’s love for making connections and filling in the blanks that makes the whole thing come alive!
You may wish to read The Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud book.
Watch this video: Perceiving is Believing: Crash Course Psychology #7 (10 mins)
“Perceiving is Believing: Crash Course Psychology #7” video by CrashCourse is licensed under the Standard YouTube licence.
When Seeing and Believing Go Wrong: Bias, Prejudice, and Cultural Factors
In this chapter, you’ve learned that perception isn’t merely a passive registration of sensory input. Instead, it is an active process influenced by our past experiences, biases, prejudices, and cultures. Given this dynamic nature of perception, it’s unsurprising that individuals may perceive identical situations in vastly different ways, depending on their own personal background and societal influences.
Implicit biases, particularly racial prejudices and stereotypes, are strong influencers of perception. Implicit bias refers to the attitudes or stereotypes that affect our understanding, actions, and decisions in an unconscious manner. These biases are pervasive, or something that is widespread or found everywhere, often clashing with our conscious values and leading to unintended outcomes.
There’s a growing body of evidence suggesting that implicit racial biases can shape how people perceive and react to objects or situations. One clear example is the influence of race on weapon identification. Payne (2001) found that participants were quicker and more likely to mistakenly say a harmless object was a weapon when they first viewed Black faces compared to first viewing White faces. This “weapons bias” was further corroborated in subsequent studies (Payne, Shimizu, & Jacoby, 2005; Todd et al., 2021).
These biases aren’t restricted to lab-based reaction time tasks; they extend to more life and death decisions like the decision to shoot. Correll, Park, Judd, & Wittenbrink (2002) and Correll, Urland, & Ito (2006) showcased this with a video game simulation where participants had to decide whether to shoot potentially armed targets. White participants were faster to shoot armed Black targets than White ones, revealing a decision bias influenced by the race of the target.
The real-world implications of these findings are staggering. Over the past decades, numerous high-profile incidents have occurred where BIPOC individuals, especially young Black men and children — for example, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Tamir Rice — were fatally shot by individuals claiming they believed the victims were armed or posed a direct threat, even when they were unarmed. This emphasises the critical importance of understanding and addressing implicit biases in perception and decision-making, especially in contexts with life-or-death implications.
To calculate this time, we used a reading speed of 150 words per minute and then added extra time to account for images and videos. This is just to give you a rough idea of the length of the chapter section. How long it will take you to engage with this chapter will vary greatly depending on all sorts of things (the complexity of the content, your ability to focus, etc).