Encyclopedia, Difference between revisions of "Wolfgang Köhler" - New World

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* Köhler, Wolfgang. [1940] 1996. ''Dynamics in Psychology''. Liveright Publishing Corporation. ISBN 0871402777
 
* Köhler, Wolfgang. [1940] 1996. ''Dynamics in Psychology''. Liveright Publishing Corporation. ISBN 0871402777
 
* Köhler, Wolfgang. [1947] 2006. ''Gestalt Psychology: An Introduction to New Concepts in Modern Psychology''. Liveright Publishing Corporation. ISBN 0871402181
 
* Köhler, Wolfgang. [1947] 2006. ''Gestalt Psychology: An Introduction to New Concepts in Modern Psychology''. Liveright Publishing Corporation. ISBN 0871402181
 +
* Köhler, Wolfgang. 1959. [http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Kohler/today.htm "Gestalt Psychology Today"] ''American Psychologist'', 14, 727-734. Retrieved July 16, 2007.
 
* Köhler, Wolfgang. 1969. ''The Task of Gestalt Psychology''. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691024529
 
* Köhler, Wolfgang. 1969. ''The Task of Gestalt Psychology''. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691024529
 
* Köhler, Wolfgang. 1971. ''The Selected Papers of Wolfgang Kohler''. Liveright Publishing Corporation. ISBN 087140253X
 
* Köhler, Wolfgang. 1971. ''The Selected Papers of Wolfgang Kohler''. Liveright Publishing Corporation. ISBN 087140253X

Revision as of 13:41, 16 July 2007


File:Maluma.jpg
Maluma type shape
File:Takete.jpg
Takete type shape

Wolfgang Köhler (January 21, 1887, – June 11, 1967) , New Hampshire) was a German Gestalt psychologist. In 1909 he received his PhD from the University of Berlin. He became an assistant at the Psychological Institute in Frankfurt, where he worked with Max Wertheimer and Kurt Koffka.

Life

Wolfgang Köhler was born on January 21, 1887 in Reval (now Tallinn) in the Russian Empire (now Estonia). His father was the headmaster of a local school for the children of Germans working in that area. When he was six, the family returned to Germany where Wolfgang and his siblings received the typical German education that well prepared them for professional careers and cultured society. Wolfgang in particular developed a love of classical music.

Köhler attended the universities of Tübingen, Bonn, and University of Berlin, where he received a thorough scientific training in physics, chemistry, and biology. In Berlin he studied with the famous physicist Max Planck, whose teachings influenced his approach to psychology. He received his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Berlin in 1909, with a dissertation on psycho-acoustics under the direction of Carl Stumpf.

After receiving his doctorate, Köhler began work at the Psychological Institute at the Frankfurt Academy. His early work in psychology involved the psychological analysis of audition, combining his training in science with his love of music.[1]

In 1910, Kurt Koffka moved to Frankfurt, and that year Köhler and Koffka began as Max Wertheimer's first subjects in the earliest experiments of the work that laid the foundation for Gestalt psychology.

This work was interrupted in 1913, when Köhler was appointed director of the Anthropoid Station on Tenerife in the Canary Islands. Due to World War I, he remained in that position until 1920, conducting numerous experiments on animal perception, cognition, and learning. There he wrote his acclaimed book The Mentality of Apes (1917).

There is a possibility that his appointment in Tenerife was not entirely for academic purposes, but that he was employed by the German government as a spy.[2] Since the apes at the station were not native to the island, but it was strategically placed to monitor naval traffic, the accusation is not unreasonable, although it was not made until after Köhler's death.

In 1920, Köhler returned to Berlin, as acting director of the Psychological Institute, becoming chair and director from 1922 until 1935. He also held the position of professor of philosophy at the university of Berlin. Wertheimer was also in Berlin, and they maintained close collaboration with Koffka who was in Giessen. They continued their work, applying Gestalt principles to a wide variety of psychological issues, attracting students from all over the world.

One of his colleagues, and sometimes rival, in Berlin was Kurt Lewin, who applied Gestalt principles in the areas of motivation and social dynamics. Another was Kurt Goldstein, a neurologist who applied Gestalt ideas to cognitive processes. With his colleagues, Köhler founded the Psychologische Forschung, a journal that provided a forum for publications of research and discussion in Gestalt psychology.

In 1925, Köhler spent a year as a visiting professor at Clark University in the United States.

When the Nazis began their rise to power in Germany, removing Jewish professors from their positions, Köhler was shocked and outraged. He wrote a letter to a Berlin newspaper protesting, and arguing that many of the greatest contributions to German culture had come from Jewish citizens. This may have been the last openly anti-Nazi opinion published during the Third Reich.[1]

With Nazi intimidation and threats to his work increasing, in 1934 Köhler accepted a position as William James lecturer at Harvard University and a visiting professor at the University of Chicago in 1935. When Köhler did not sign an oath of personal loyalty to Adolf Hitler, his position in Berlin was filled and his assistants dismissed. In the summer of 1935, he resigned his position in Berlin and moved permanently to the US, taking a position at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, where he worked until his retirement in 1958.

He edited his William James lectures from 1934, publishing them in 1938 as The Place of Value in a World of Facts, and continued to pursue his application of ideas from physics, such as vector forces in the psychological and ethical context.

In 1956 Köhler was elected the president of the American Psychological Association.

Wolfgang Köhler died on June 11, 1967 in Enfield, New Hampshire.

Work

Gestalt Psychology

In 1929, he conducted an experiment in which he presented test participants with two drawings, one with only curved lines and one with only straight lines and angles. The participants were asked to name one of the drawings "Maluma" and the other "Takete" - two nonsense words. An overwhelming majority named the curved one Maluma and the angular one Takete. The test was made with participants from different cultures, which suggests that the preference was a universal one. The result of this experiment has been called the bouba/kiki effect.

Problem-solving

During his time at the Anthropoid Research Station in the Canary Islands, Köhler conducted numerous experiments on chimpanzees. He was interested in how chimpanzees were able to retrieve bananas suspended from the top of their enclosure. He observed them to stand on boxes, and even stack boxes on top of each other, to get closer to the food.

Köhler's work with chimpanzees led him to believe that animals, like humans, are capable of problem-solving. His studies revealed that apes are capable not only of trial-and-error learning that Edward Thorndike had asserted was the basis of all animal learning, but are also capable of what Köhler called "insight" learning—the "aha!" solution to problems. In this extract from The Mentality of Apes, he described the behavior of the chimpanzee Sultan employing a stick that was too short to reach a piece of fruit as a tool to reach a longer stick, which he then used to retrieve the fruit:

Sultan tries to reach the fruit with the smaller of the two sticks. Not succeeding, he tears at a piece of wire that projects from the netting of his cage, but that too is in vain ... He suddenly picks up the little stick once more, goes up to the bars directly opposite the long stick, scratches it towards him with the "auxiliary," seizes it, and goes with it to the point opposite the objective (the fruit), which he secures. (Köhler 1917)

It has been pointed out, however, that Köhler did not control well for prior experience or the possibility that the animals imitated each other's behavior. Thus, it is difficult to be sure that some trial-and-error learning had not occurred before the apparent "insight" giving the solution to the problem.

File:BoobaKiki.png
This picture is used as a test to demonstrate that people may not attach sounds to shapes arbitrarily: a remote tribe calls the shape on the left "kiki" and the one on the right "bouba".

The Bouba/Kiki Effect was discovered by German-American psychologist Wolfgang Köhler in 1929. He conducted tests in which a researcher displays two crudely drawn shapes, one jagged and one curvy, to an audience and asks, "Which of these shapes is bouba and which is kiki?" No matter what languages the respondents speak, 98 percent will pick the curvy shape as bouba and the jagged one as kiki. This result suggests that the human brain is somehow able to extract abstract properties from the shapes and sounds.

Interestingly, individuals afflicted with autism do not show this effect. Where average people agree with the typical result 90% of the time, autistics only agree 60% of the time.[3]

Legacy

Major Works

  • Köhler, Wolfgang. [1917] 1976. The Mentality of Apes. W. W. Norton. ISBN 0871401088
  • Köhler, Wolfgang. [1938] 1976. The Place of Value in a World of Facts. Liveright Publishing Corporation. ISBN 087140107X
  • Köhler, Wolfgang. [1940] 1996. Dynamics in Psychology. Liveright Publishing Corporation. ISBN 0871402777
  • Köhler, Wolfgang. [1947] 2006. Gestalt Psychology: An Introduction to New Concepts in Modern Psychology. Liveright Publishing Corporation. ISBN 0871402181
  • Köhler, Wolfgang. 1959. "Gestalt Psychology Today" American Psychologist, 14, 727-734. Retrieved July 16, 2007.
  • Köhler, Wolfgang. 1969. The Task of Gestalt Psychology. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691024529
  • Köhler, Wolfgang. 1971. The Selected Papers of Wolfgang Kohler. Liveright Publishing Corporation. ISBN 087140253X

Notes

  1. 1.0 1.1 Robert Sherrill, "Natural Wholes: Wolfgang Köhler and Gestalt Theory" in Kimble et al. Portraits of Pioneers in Psychology, (1991 pp. 257-273)
  2. Ronald Ley, A Whisper of Espionage: Wolfgang Köhler and the Apes of Tenerife (Diane Publishing Company 1997 ISBN 0788151347)
  3. V.S. Ramachandran, and Lindsay M. Oberman Evidence for Deficits in Mirror Neuron Function, Multisensory Integration, and Sound-form Symbolism in Autism Spectrum Disorders Retrieved May 7, 2007.

References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

  • Ash, Mitchell G. 1998. Gestalt Psychology in German Culture, 1890-1967: Holism and the Quest for Objectivity. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521646278
  • Boring, E. G. 1950. A History of Experimental Psychology. Prentice-Hall. ISBN 0133900398
  • Kimble, Gregory A., Michael Wertheimer, and Charlotte L. White (Editors). 1991. Portraits of Pioneers in Psychology. American Psychological Association and Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. ISBN 0805811362
  • Ley, Ronald. 1997. A Whisper of Espionage : Wolfgang Kohler and the Apes of Tenerife. Diane Publishing Company. ISBN 0788151347

External links


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