Melad, Rejesh D.

Gestalt Principles
1) Law of Proximity - The belief that we group together objects that are closer to each
other.

As we can see, here’s an example of poor use of Gestalt Principle. This was one voted as the
worst website. You don’t really know where to click. There’s no organization to what you see
here and that’s what it’s all about. We hear the term in Gestalt meaning those you know that’s
whole is greater than the sum of the part thing. But it’s really about organization and you can
see that the website above is just poorly organized.

2) Law of Similarity – The notion that we place objects with similar characteristics in a
group. These characteristics can include color, size, font, shape, texture and more.

We probably see here are rows of circles and triangles

and that’s because we have tendency to put together
things that are similar.
 3) Law of Closure – Closure explains a lot of what we’ve seen already even though an
image is not complete like the face of MARS, we can see it as complete.

When I see this image, I probably say that’s But we

move these blobs a little bit
a bunch of blobs. to get them a little bit closer and
shows that the image is a horse and
rider. What makes us see the horse
and rider is called closure.

4) Law of Figure Ground

You could see a lady or you could see a man playing saxophone. The interest thing with figure
ground distinction is depending on what you make as the main object of the image and what
you see as the background of an image can change your entire perception of it.

5) Law of Pragnanz People will

perceive and interpret ambiguous
or complex images as the simplest
form possible. For example, we
perceive the image of series of
circles rather than as much more
many complicated shapes. This
principle is based in the idea that
 we perceived image as simple rather than complex and complete rather than
incomplete.

6) Law of Good Continuation - Individuals have the tendency to continue contours

whenever elements of the pattern establish an implied direction.

Example : The students saw a pattern in the answer of their exams, therefore the student
followed the pattern in answering the exam.
List 5 ways to apply Gestalt psychology in the teacher-learning process.
1) Based on Law of Good Continuation, teacher will teach first English Alphabet, followed
by their sound of each letter, before teaching the students how to read English words.

2) Based on Law of Proximity, teacher can relate photosynthesis with student’s

background information on the respiratory system.
3) Based on Law of Closure, the students tend to complete the sentences given by teacher
based on their understanding of its context.
4) Base on Law of Pragnanz, the teacher can show complex images and ask students to
explain it based on their own understanding.
5) Based on Law of Figure Ground, the most important ideas and words in the hand-outs
given by teacher were written as bold.