Müller, Georg Elias

Born July 20, 1850, in Grimma; died Dec. 23, 1934, in Göttingen. German psychologist, one of the founders of experimental psychology. Professor at the University of Göttingen from 1881. An advocate of the theory of psychophysical parallelism.

Müller conducted research on neurophysiological substantiation of Fechner’s law (1893), methods of psychology (1900), attention (1924), and visual perception (1930). He interpreted the principles of perception in terms of his own version of associative psychology, which he called complex theory. He is best known for his work on visual perception and memory. Müller developed the theory of “perseveration tendencies,” according to which visual perceptions that have already been in the consciousness have a tendency to recur.