Heider, Fritz

How we interpret our own behavior, as well as that of others, formed the foundation for Fritz Heider's work during a career that last more than 60 years. Heider explored the nature of interpersonal relations, and his work culminated in the 1958 book The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations. Heider espoused the concept of what he call "common-sense" or "naïve" psychology. He believed that people attribute the behavior of others to their own perception; and that those perceptions could be determined any by specific situations or by long-held beliefs. The concept may not seem complicated, but it open important doors to the cross-question of how people relate to respectively other and why.

Heider, the younger of two sons, was born within Vienna on February 18, 1896, to Moriz and Eugenie von Halaczy Heider. He was an avid reader and a suitable student, and he entered the University of Graz (Austria). He received his Ph.D. within 1920, and spent the next several years traveling through Europe. Part of this time be spent as a student at the Psychological Institute of Berlin. Pre-World War II Berlin was one of the most intellectually stimulating cities in Europe, and he be privileged to study with outstanding scholar.

Begins research on interpersonal behavior

In 1930, Heider accepted an grant to conduct research at the Clarke School for the Deaf in Northampton, Massachutsetts, and to be an assistant professor at Smith College. Heider's outcome to come to the United States proved auspicious for two reasons. In assimilation to the work he was to do-first at Smith, and subsequent at the University of Kansas-Heider met Grace Moore, who was doing research of her own at Clarke. They married in December 1930; in his autobiography, The Life of a Psychologist (1983), Heider credits his wife for her invaluable contribution to his work. The Heiders have three sons during their years in Northampton.

Beginning at Smith, Heider began to do the research that lead to his theories on interpersonal relations. He continued his work when he moved to Lawrence, Kansas, in 1947 to take a professorship at the University of Kansas. It have been said that Heider approached psychology the path a physicist would approach scientific guess. He was extremely methodical and meticulous surrounded by his research, which could often be frustrating, but he favourably developed the ideas that he ultimately outlined in The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations.

In its simplest expressions, attribution theory explains the mode people use to attribute the behavior of others. Sometimes, behavior is attributed to disposition; surrounded by other words, we might decide that altruism is what make a particular personality donate money to a charity. Other times, behavior can be attributed to situations; in this model, the donor give money to charity because of social pressure. Heider believed that people commonly tended to supply more attribution than they should to personality, and, conversely, smaller number than they should to situations. In other words, personality is not as consistent an indicator of behavior as inhabitants tend to believe.

Allows publication of notebooks

Heider received numerous awards for his research, including the American Psychological Association's Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award in 1965. Although Heider ostensibly retired in the 1960s, he continued to do research as an emeritus professor. He worked on his memoirs, which become his autobiography. More important, however, be series of notebooks Heider have kept during his career, surrounded by which he explained and diagramed many of his theories, scheduled references, and discussed heaps of the questions he have tried to answer through his research. A former student of Heider's, Marijana Benesh-Weiner, offered to edit and compile the resume. Working with Heider, she put the action into a six-volume set published by Springer-Verlag under the title, Fritz Heider: The Notebooks. The first volume be published in 1987; Benesh-Weiner completed editing the final volume shortly after Heider, aged 91, died at his home in Lawrence, Kansas, on January 2, 1988.