Gestaltelvek

Gestaltelvek, or Gestalt principles, are a group of theories in perception and cognitive psychology that describe how people tend to organize sensory input into coherent wholes rather than just a collection of individual elements. Originating with the work of Max Wertheimer, Wolfgang Köhler, and Kurt Koffka in the early 20th century, these ideas propose that the mind imposes structure on ambiguous or complex stimuli to create stable percepts.

Key principles include figure-ground organization, which distinguishes a figure from its background; similarity, where alike elements are grouped; proximity, where nearby elements are perceived as a unit; continuity or good continuation, where lines are seen as following smooth paths; and closure, where incomplete figures are imagined as complete. Additional principles such as connectedness, common fate, Prägnanz (the tendency toward the simplest, most stable form), and symmetry describe how elements are perceptually bound into larger wholes. These ideas emphasize that perception is holistic and that the whole is more than the sum of its parts.

Gestalt principles are descriptive, not strict rules, and they acknowledge that context, expectation, and experience shape perceptual organization. They have influenced fields such as visual design, ergonomics, advertising, and user interface layout by guiding how to arrange elements for quick recognition and efficient processing.

In contemporary psychology, Gestalt ideas coexist with bottom-up and top-down processing accounts, neural theories of perception, and learning-based explanations. While some findings refine or limit the original claims, Gestaltelvek remain foundational for understanding how humans interpret complex visual environments.