Briefly describe Gestalt psychology and functionalism in one paragraph each. Also, compare and contrast these two approaches.

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

An important reaction to structuralism was the development of Gestalt psychology in the early 1900s. Gestalt psychology emphasizes how perception is organized.
Instead of considering the individual parts that make up thinking, gestalt psychologists took the opposite tack, studying how people consider individual elements together as units or wholes. Led by German scientists such as Hermann Ebbinghaus and Max Wertheimer, gestalt psychologists proposed that "The whole is different from the sum of its parts," meaning that our perception, or understanding, of objects is greater and more meaningful than the individual elements that make up our perceptions. Gestalt psychologists have made substantial contributions to our understanding of perception.
The perspective that replaced structuralism is known as functionalism. Rather than focusing on the mind's structure, functionalism concentrated on what the mind does and how behavior functions. Functionalists, whose perspective became prominent in the early 1900s, asked what role behavior plays in allowing people to adapt to their environments. Led by the American psychologist William James, the functionalists examined how behavior allows people to satisfy their needs and how our "stream of consciousness" permits us to adapt to our environment.