Michotte, Albert (1881–1965)

Belgian experimental psychologist. He is known for his investigations of perceptual causality. By means of ingenious and careful experimentation, he studied the dynamic organization of the perceptual world and was particularly concerned with the role of language in the analysis of perceptual phenomena. His book La Perception de la causalité/The Perception of Causality 1946 has become a classic.

In his experiments, subjects looking through a slit saw what appeared to them as two small rectangular spots in motion. Alternatively, they looked at a screen on which small moving shapes were projected. When one object A was seen to bump into another B, A appeared to give B a push or set it in motion, which Michotte termed the launching effect. If object A on reaching object B was seen to move with it and at the same speed, A appeared to carry B, which he termed the entraining effect. Michotte observed these phenomena, and others, under various experimental conditions. His work is important not least because it is a scientific investigation of a topic that has mainly been the province of philosophers.