Fritz Heider

Fritz Heider (February 19, 1896 – January 2, 1988) was an Austrian psychologist whose work was related to the Gestalt school. In 1958 he published The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations, which expanded upon his creations of balance theory and attribution theory. This book presents a wide-range analysis of the conceptual framework and the psychological processes that influence human social perception (Malle,2008). It had taken 15 years to complete; before it was completed it had already circulated through a small group of social psychologists.

Heider was born in Vienna, Austria in 1896. His approach to higher education was rather casual, and he wandered freely throughout Europe studying and traveling as he pleased for many years. His father was an architect, which influenced him initially to study architecture at the University of Graz; he had first wanted to become a painter. He tried his hand at studying law, but didn't quite like it either. Since he really liked to learn, he therefore went to audit courses at the university. He eventually became more interested in psychology and philosophy. At the age of 24 he received a Ph.D. from the University of Graz, for his innovative study of the causal structure of perception included the work on 'Thing and Medium' a work on the psychology of perception, and traveled to Berlin, where he worked at the Psychology Institute under Wolfgang Koehler, Max Wertheimer and Kurt Lewin.

In 1927 he accepted a position at the University of Hamburg, whose faculty included the psychologist William Stern and Ernst Cassirer, the philosopher whose thinking on the role of theory on science had an important influence on Kurt Lewin.

In 1930, Heider was offered an opportunity to conduct research at the Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton, Massachusetts, which was associated with Smith College, also in Northampton. This prospect was particularly attractive to him because Kurt Koffka, one of the founders of the Gestalt school of psychology, held a position at nearby Smith College (Heider, 1983).

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