Fritz Heider

Fritz Heider (1896–1988) was an Austrian-born American psychologist who founded attribution theory — the study of how people explain the causes of behavior and events. His work laid the groundwork for social cognition research and remains central to social psychology.

Core ideas

• Attribution theory: people act as “naive psychologists,” constructing causal explanations for observed behavior by attributing it to either internal dispositions or external situations.
• Balance theory: people seek cognitive consistency in their relationships and attitudes. Triadic relations (person–other–object) tend toward balanced states where the product of the three sentiment relations is positive.
• Internal vs. external attribution: the distinction between explaining behavior by the actor’s character, ability, or intention (internal) versus by the situation, task difficulty, or luck (external).

Related theories

• Attribution theory
• Edward E. Jones

Notable works

• The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations (1958)
• “Social Perception and Phenomenal Causality” (1944)