Objectives
After completing this chapter, you will be able to- state the Gestalt laws of perception;
- describe the role that learning plays in perception;
- explain what illusions teach us about perception;
- explain how both binocular vision and monocular cues play a role in depth per-
ception; - discuss some of issues associated with the topic of extrasensory perception.
Kurt Koffka (1886–1941), one of the founders of Gestalt psychology, said that
the great question of perception is: “Why do things look the way they do?”
At first the question seems almost silly. We are tempted to answer, “Because
things are they way they are.” It would seem that tall things look tall because they
aretall. And distant things look distant because they aredistant. On the other
hand, why does the Moon look larger just above the horizon than it does when
it’s overhead? It hasn’t gotten any bigger, or any closer. And, if a series of discon-
nected dots are arranged in the pattern of, say, the letter F, it looks like the letter,
not a bunch of disconnected dots—which, it could be argued, it actually is.
You learned in the last chapter that visual images on your retina are upside-
down. Nonetheless, you perceive them as right side up. At the level of sensation, it’s
an inverted world. At the level of perception, the world doesn’t look inverted at all.
Koffka’s question does not have to be limited to the sense of vision. The same
question could be adapted to the other senses. The principles set forth in this
chapter, largely in connection with vision, can be readily applied to perception in
general.
Sensation, as indicated in chapter 4, is the raw data of experience. Percep-
tion,on the other hand, is the organization and the meaning we give to primi-
tive information. It can be said with some degree of confidence that we use
sensory information to create a psychological world.
Returning to Koffka, he said that there is a distinction between the geo-
graphical world and the psychological world. The geographical worldis the
actual world “out there,” the world as defined and described by physics. The psy-
chological worldis the world “in here,” the world as experienced by the sub-
ject. Although common sense usually says it’s the so-called “real world” or
physical world that determines our behavior, it can be argued that common sense
isn’t sufficiently analytical. Reflection suggests that we behave in terms of what
we perceive to be true, not necessarily in terms of what is actually true.
If ice is thin in the physical world, and it is solid in your psychological world, you
are likely to skate on it. And, of course, you may make a serious mistake as a result.58 PSYCHOLOGY