Gestalt Experiment

Gestaltism attempts to explain the psychology behind human visual behavior, especially the way we organize and group things. A concept related to these principles is the human’s tendency to see the whole rather than its individual parts. I subjected 3 people to an experiment to explore this tendency.

The experiment involved two parts. During the first session, the test subjects were shown five unrelated photographs. Then a screen appeared with what appeared to be a bunch of organic black shapes scattered randomly. What the test subjects would hopefully identify within these shapes was that they created a horse and rider. The participant was instructed to click through a series of 20 steps; after each step the black shapes moved slightly closer together. If at any point the participant recognized the black shapes forming an image, they were to say what they saw aloud.

For session two, the same process took place, except that the first five photographs shown were of animals. This was to see if the similar body forms to the horse and similar subject matter would trigger recognition of the horse and rider image earlier.

My first test subject was my mother. After clicking through the 20 steps in session one, she hadn’t identified any image from the black shapes. Then she mumbled, “Well, I thought maybe I saw a Santa Clause face or something…” I thought this was interesting because one of the five images prior to session one was Christmas related and had a couple Santa figurines in it. After clicking through the 20 steps again in session two, she still had not identified the horse and rider. She noted one of the individual black shapes resembled a duck bill to her. Again, it seems her perceptions were based on the previous five images which were of animals.

The second participant was a 28 year old male. After clicking through all 20 steps in session one, he hadn’t identified the horse a rider. His only comment was he thought he saw a face briefly. After looking at step 20 for about five seconds in session two, he identified the horse, but not the rider. He said it was the shape of the horse’s front legs that triggered his recognition.

My final test subject was a 30 year old female. She isn’t a designer, per say, but she has an excellent eye for good design, illustration, interior design, and is very crafty. She identified a horse and rider on step 16 from session one. After seeing the images of animals in session two, she found the horse and rider identifiable at step 13.

What I found most fascinating about this experiment was how my first two test subjects were really influenced by the first five images. What they saw in the black shapes were dramatically effected by the context of what else they had been seeing. This is an important takeaway as a designer. I must consider the visual context that will surround my designs and how that will affect people’s perceptions of what I create.

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