Fritz Heider

Fritz Heider, who lived from 19 February 1896 to 2 January 1988, was an American and Austrian social 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. The book presents a wide-ranging analysis of the conceptual framework and the psychological processes that influence human social perception, and it had taken fifteen years to complete. Psychological research into attribution began with his work in the early twentieth century.