Fritz Heider (19 February 1896 – 2 January 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. Biography Heider was born in Vienna, Austria on February 19, 1896 but he grew up in Graz. His family was Jewish. During his childhood, Heider sustained a serious eye injury which later turned him quite serious and shy in his adolescence. Because of his injury, Heider avoided the draft during World War I. With his father’s encouragement, Heider enrolled to study architecture at the University of Graz. After growing tired of studying architecture, Heider attempted to study law at Graz as well but eventually became tired of both subjects. Since he really liked to learn for its own sake, he struck a deal with his father and proceeded to audit courses at the university for four years. Gradually, 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 including his work on Thing and Medium on the psychology of perception. Afterwards, he traveled to Berlin, where he attended lectures at the Psychology Institute. There, Heider’s studies focused on the Gestalt psychology of 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 in 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 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 Smith College (Heider, 1983). It was in Northampton that he met his wife Grace (née Moore). Grace was one of the first people Heider met in the United States. As an assistant to