Social Psychology

2008B.F.
Hogrefe
2008;
Malle:
Vol.
& Heiders
Huber
39(3):163173
Publishers
Legacy

Fritz Heiders Legacy

Celebrated Insights, Many of Them Misunderstood
Bertram F. Malle
University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, USA
Abstract. This article reviews some of the central ideas in Heiders (1958) book, The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations: commonsense psychology, personal causality, causal attribution, and the social perception of mental states. Relying on Heiders own words to
introduce these topics, the review shows that post-Heiderian attribution research overlooked and misunderstood several of Heiders
contributions. For example, he has been falsely portrayed as postulating a person-situation dichotomy as the core of peoples understanding of behavior; and his analysis of dispositions as primarily mental states has been mistaken for one of dispositions as stable traits.
Heiders original ideas are, however, firmly connected to cognitive science research on the folk theory of mind and provide a foundation
for recent social-psychological work on inferences of other peoples mental states.
Keywords: attribution, explanation, trait inference, actor-observer asymmetry, intentionality, causality, common sense, social perception

Fritz Heiders thinking has influenced several generations

of social psychologists, primarily through his work on social perception and attribution processes. The culmination
of his theorizing appeared in1958 in The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations, a book that took 15 years to complete and whose chapters had already been mimeographed
and circulated since the late 1940s among the, at that time,
small circle of social psychologists. In his book, Heider
presented a wide-ranging analysis of the conceptual framework and the psychological processes that undergird human social perception. This article reviews some of Heiders central claims about social perception and attribution,
reflects on the reception and often misunderstanding of
these claims in the social psychological literature, and describes recent empirical research that supports and expands
on Heiders hypotheses.

Common-Sense Psychology as
Foundation and Phenomenon
The Introduction section to Heiders 1958 book identified
two interrelated goals: First, Heider wanted to develop a
scientific theory of interpersonal behavior, grounded in a
conceptual network suitable to some of the problems in
this field (p. 4). This scientific theory, he believed, could
benefit a great deal from an understanding of how people
themselves conceptualize human behavior, for the ordinary person has a great and profound understanding of himself and of other people (p. 2). Second, Heider wanted to
reconstruct that very common-sense psychology, the network of interrelated concepts that ordinary people use to
2008 Hogrefe & Huber Publishers

describe, explain, and predict interpersonal behavior. This

reconstruction would, in turn, lead to a scientific theory of
social perception a theory of how people think about social behavior.
In Heiders project, common-sense psychology, thus,
has two functions: It serves as a source of truths about actual social behavior (prescientific knowledge that should
inform science), and it is an object of study in its own right,
because it underpins social perception and interpersonal
behavior.
Heiders first goal, to directly shape social psychologys
scientific language and approach through a consideration
of common-sense psychology, has seen limited success.
Trying to avoid offering mere bubba psychology (McGuire, 1997) and, therefore, aiming at nonobviousness
(Ross & Nisbett, 1991), the field has focused more on the
flaws in peoples reasoning (e.g., Nisbett & Ross, 1980)
than on the effectiveness of their framework of social perception (Krueger & Funder, 2004). Unfavorable comparisons to normative (often statistical) models under tightly
constrained laboratory conditions (e.g., McArthur, 1972;
Jones & Harris, 1967) have been more common than genuinely Heiderian studies of the specific concepts and processes by which people perceive others in natural interactions. Heiders image of the person as a self-determined
agent is echoed by a small number of theories in the field
(e.g., Bandura, 2006; Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975; Deci & Ryan, 1987), but much of social psychology has moved into
the opposite direction, increasingly emphasizing unconscious processes and brain mechanisms as the most important determinants of human behavior (e.g., Bargh, 2005;
Greenwald, 1992; Wegner, 2002).
Heiders second goal to study peoples perception,
reasoning about, and evaluation of social behavior is as
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DOI 10.1027/1864-9335.39.3.163

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B.F. Malle: Heiders Legacy

relevant today as it was 50 years ago. Like Lewin and

Asch before him, Heider recognized that social psychology must chart out peoples subjective perceptions and
naive-psychological assumptions, because whether
right or wrong they are critical factors in guiding social
interaction. Though Heider never formulated a theory of
social perception in a systematic way, his thinking in this
domain has had a powerful and lasting impact on social
psychology.
Heiders specific focus was to study the ordinary persons conceptual framework, whereas much of social
psychology since has emphasized mechanisms, such as
judgmental heuristics, schemas, and implicit processing.
Other fields have taken up more clearly Heiders interest
in peoples fundamental concepts of mind and action. Today, the importance of common-sense psychology typically labeled folk psychology or theory of mind is widely accepted and discussed within developmental psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and primatology (e.g.,
Gallagher & Frith, 2003; Povinelli, 1996; Wellman &
Woolley, 1990). The idea that humans invariably perceive other humans as having mental states that guide
their intentional actions has fostered engaging discussions in philosophy, linguistics, and artificial intelligence
(e.g., Carruthers & Smith, 1996; Elio, 2002; Givn,
2005). In addition, research on autism and schizophrenia
has benefited from considering the hypothesis that certain aspects of the folk theory of mind are lacking in autistic and schizophrenic individuals, which might partially account for their difficulties in interpersonal behavior
(e.g., Baron-Cohen, 2000; Langdon, 2005).
Until recently, social psychology had not embraced
this view that human social cognition is best described in
terms of its fundamental conceptual assumptions, as a
folk theory of intentional agency and other minds. More
commonly, social cognition has been characterized as a
packet of information processing systems, schemas, and
heuristics (Fiske & Taylor, 1991; Kunda, 1999). Undoubtedly, these systems support the processing of social
events, but as generic systems, they fail to identify what
is unique about social cognition something that the
folk-theory approach readily identifies. There are indications, however, that theory of mind and folk psychology
research is beginning to find its way (back) into social
psychology. This trend is reflected both in empirical
work (e.g., Ames, 2004; Boonzaier, McClure, & Sutton,
2005; Levi & Haslam, 2005; Malle, Knobe, OLaughlin,
Pearce, & Nelson, 2000; Malle, Knobe & Nelson, 2007;
Reeder, Vonk, Ronk, Ham, & Lawrence, 2004), review
articles (e.g., Hilton, 2007; Saxe, Carey, & Kanwisher,
2004; Uleman, Adil Saribay, & Gonzalez, 2008), edited
volumes (Malle, Moses, & Baldwin, 2001; Malle &
Hodges, 2005), and entries in textbooks (Gilovich, Keltner, & Nisbett, 2006; Moskowitz, 2004).
I will now briefly review what post-Heiderian research
has uncovered about the fundamental common-sense concepts of mind and action.
Social Psychology 2008; Vol. 39(3):163173

What Is Theory of Mind?

Humans perceive people, and interactions among them,
through a conceptual framework that characterizes behavior as fundamentally linked with mental states. This framework, variously called nave, lay, common-sense, or folk
psychology, and most frequently theory of mind, consists
of (a) systems that filter, group, and integrate certain stimulus inputs into core concepts or categories such as agent,
intention, belief, and reason; and (b) assumptions about
these categories and their relations (Malle, 2005). For example, objects that are self-propelled and behave contingently are classified into the category agent (Johnson,
2000; Premack, 1990); object-directed movements of such
agents are classified into the category intentional action
(Woodward, Sommerville, & Guajardo, 2001); and the
concept of intentional action is defined in terms of the mental state concepts belief, desire, and intention (Kashima,
McIntyre, & Clifford, 1998; Malle & Knobe, 1997a).
Even though this framework is often labeled a theory,
there has been considerable debate over the adequacy of
this term (Carruthers & Smith, 1996). For some researchers, the analogy to scientific theories was quite literal (Flavell, 1999; Gopnik & Wellman, 1992); for others, such a
literal interpretation left too many important processes out
of the picture (e.g., simulation or empathy; Goldman, 1989;
Gordon, 1986; Harris, 1992). The term theory of mind has
become so common in the field, however, that a radical
change of terminology may be unwise. Fortunately, this
term no longer comes with an automatic commitment to
interpret folk psychology as strictly theory-like (Malle &
Hodges, 2005). Increasingly, theory of mind and its cognate terms refer both to a conceptual framework and to a
wide variety of psychological processes that rely on this
framework such as action parsing, simulation, explicit
mental state inference, and explanation. When precision
(rather than brevity) is desired, one should, therefore, differentiate between the folk-conceptual framework of mind
and behavior and the social-cognitive processes that it supports (Malle, 2008).
With the clarification of what theory of mind consists
of, research into its workings can also be protected from
the bad reputation that the terms nave, common-sense, or
folk psychology have among many social psychologists
(Epstein, 1997). Social psychologists typically group under
these terms a wide variety of beliefs, proverbs, and folk
tales that people might endorse in a given culture at a certain point in history, many of which can be easily shown to
be incorrect. However, this is not what cognitive scientists
have in mind when they speak of a theory of mind. Peoples
theory of mind does not comprise folk tales or community
beliefs, nor proverbs or platitudes; it consists of a network
of fundamental concepts that resemble Kantian categories
that is, concepts without which social cognition would
not be possible (Malle, 2005).
Some psychologists (e.g., Smedslund, 1997, this issue),
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B.F. Malle: Heiders Legacy

linguists (e.g., Wierzbicka, 1996), and numerous philosophers (e.g., Christensen & Turner, 1993; Greenwood, 1991)
have attempted to identify these fundamental concepts
through linguistic and conceptual analysis. By contrast, most
theory-of-mind researchers have adopted a more bottom-up
approach, trying to reconstruct childrens and adults conceptual assumptions from their cognitive and behavioral responses in the laboratory and in everyday life. These differing
approaches, however, agree on what lies at the heart of this
conceptual framework: the notions of agent, intentionality,
and mental state categories such as belief and desire. Heider
already anticipated most of these concepts, as discussed next.

The Importance of Intentionality

(Personal Causality)
For Heider, one of the major differences between person
perception and object perception was that people apply two
very different conceptual models to the perception and explanation of human behavior (Heider, 1958, chap. 4). The
first is the model of impersonal causality, which is applied
to unintentional human behaviors (e.g., yawning or feeling
sad) as well as to physical events (e.g., leaves falling or
waves splashing). The second is the model of what Heider
termed personal causality, which is invoked whenever a
human agent performs an intentional action (e.g., turning
pages or phoning a friend). Personal causality, Heider
wrote, refers to instances in which p causes x intentionally. That is to say, the action is purposive (Heider, 1958,
p. 100).
Heider thus identified what would later be recognized as
a central element in the folk theory of mind: the concept of
intentional action. Surprisingly, however, this concept faded in subsequent attribution research. Jones and Daviss
(1965) influential paper From Acts to Dispositions started the analysis with Heider and seemed to take lay judgments of intentionality into account, but after the first two
pages the focus shifted entirely to a theory of correspondent trait inferences. Attributions of intention were merely
a precondition for inferences concerning those underlying
stable characteristics toward which the perceiver presses in
attaching significance to action (p. 222). These trait inferences were presumed to be what people cared most about
in person perception (Shaver, 1975).
Later models of correspondent inference were also entirely focused on traits and set aside the role of intentionality in the interpretation and causal explanation of behavior (e.g., Gilbert, 1989; Trope, 1986). For example, in Gilberts two-stage model of dispositional attribution, the
perceiver goes through an early process of action identification (what is the other person doing?) and a later stage
of attributional processeswhere the perceiver does or
does not infer a disposition. The fundamental distinction
between peoples causal model of intentional action and
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their model of unintentional behavior was lost; not because

it was denied but because the scientists models no longer
mentioned.
Kelley (1967) did not offer a theory of trait inference but
a model of causal attribution. His declared goal was to
highlight some of the central ideas contained in Heiders
theory (Kelley, 1967, p. 192). However, the crucial distinction Heider made between intentional and unintentional behavior vanished in Kelleys model. In all of attribution,
the choice is between external attribution and internal
[. . .] attribution (Kelley, 1967, p. 194), and that choice is
based on computations of cause-effect covariations. Even
though this process was assumed to apply equally to physical, unintentional, and intentional events, in reality all of
Kelleys examples referred to unintentional events: Effects such as experiences, sensations, or responses
(p. 196), impressions (p. 197), as well as arousal states and
evaluative reactions (pp. 231232). In fact, as argued in
Knobe and Malle (2002), a covariation model cannot account for how people explain intentional action (see also
Malle, 2004; Malle, Knobe, OLaughlin, Pearce, & Nelson,
2000). Thus, although textbook entries and reviews of attribution research consistently laud Heider as the father of
attribution work, apparently the fathers words were not
heeded: Heiders notion of personal/intentional causality
was left out of the dominant theories of causal attribution.
Some researchers pointed out this limitation (e.g., Buss,
1978; Locke & Pennington, 1982), but the mainstream
treatment of attribution remained unaffected.

Recent Research on Intentionality

Fifty years later, what do we know about the folk concept
of intentionality? We know now that the distinction between agents and the rest of the world is one of the earliest
social-cognitive distinctions that infants make. At this
stage of development, agents are conceptualized as selfpropelled entities (Premack, 1990) that act contingently on
the childs own actions (Johnson, 2000). Because these features vary systematically with intentional actions, they constitute the earliest concept of intentionality. Still a concept
about a class of behavior, it already captures an agents
directedness toward goals toward objects or toward
events that succeed characteristic behaviors. By 1214
months of age, children engage in simple forms of joint
attention with a caregiver, acts of coordinated engagement
with both an object and another perceiver of that object.
Children also consult adults faces and bodily reactions to
decide whether they themselves should approach or avoid
certain objects. This social referencing reveals their appreciation of another persons affective evaluation. Moreover,
coordination of their own and the other persons affect increasingly refines childrens capacity for genuine joint attention (Hobson, 2005). Two additional processes jointly
open the door to a more explicit understanding of minds as
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distinct from behavior: imitation and increasing awareness

of ones own mental states. As children expand their own
repertoire of acting intentionally (and skillfully) in the
world, they almost obsessively imitate others behaviors.
As they also experience more fully the affective and motivational states associated with their own actions (Russell,
1996), they learn to associate these types of experiences
with other peoples observed actions as well. Relying on
what Meltzoff and Brooks (2001) called the Like me assumption, children reason that another person who performs a particular action must have the same experiences
that they themselves have when they so act. In this way.
behavioral configurations become indicators of mental
states. However, situations in which children act and feel
the same way as adults would not suffice to teach them the
distinctness of mind from behavior; children also have to
experience the opposite situations in which they clash
with another persons evaluation or desire. Seeing how responses can differ with respect to the same object or event
invites the recognition of subjective mental states (Malle,
2002). Parents who endure their childrens terrible twos
witness the emergence of the mental concept of desire,
which is also the first mentalistic category that is expressed
in language (Bartsch & Wellman, 1995).
With increasing age, the concept of intentional action
becomes more tightly connected to specific mental states,
and children begin to integrate the interplay of beliefs, desires, and intentions within the concept of intentional action
(Astington, 2001). Eventually the adult concept of intentionality emerges, which requires five conditions to be met
(Malle & Knobe, 1997a): An action is considered intentional when the agent had a desire for an outcome, a belief
that the action would lead to that outcome, an intention to
perform the action, the skill to perform the action, and
awareness of fulfilling that intention while performing the
action. Although actions are frequently recognized rapidly
and configurally by what they look like in a given context,
in situations of doubt or dispute (most notably in the courtroom), people explicitly consider these conditions to determine whether a given behavior was indeed intentional
(Malle & Nelson, 2003).
The sophistication needed to fully master the concept of
intentionality is quite remarkable. For example, the concepts of intention, desire, and goal are often used interchangeably in the psychological literature, but ordinary
people clearly differentiate between them (Heider, 1958;
Malle & Knobe, 2001). At least three characteristics differentiate the folk concepts of intention and desire. First, intentions represent the intenders own action (I intend to
A, where A is an action), whereas desires can represent
anything (I want O, where O can be an object or state of
affairs, including another persons actions or experiences).
Second, intentions are the output of practical reasoning,
whereas desires are typically the input to such reasoning
(I intend to A because I want O). Third, intentions come
with a characteristic commitment to perform the intended
action whereas desires do not. Children before the age of 6
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or 7 appear to hold a mixed desire/intention concept that is

closely tied to action (Astington, 2001), but after this age
they reliably distinguish desire from intention, even when
both are removed from action (Schult, 2002). Perugini and
Bagozzi (2004) showed that attitude theory, which has previously ignored the intention-desire differentiation, gains
predictive power when this distinction is made. This is one
of the cases in which Heiders vision came true that an
exploration of common-sense concepts actually benefits
psychological theory and research.
Intentionality also plays a significant role in judgments
of responsibility, blame, and praise. It has long been known
(and was pointed out by Heider) that a behavior is blamed
or praised more strongly if it is intentional rather than unintentional. Interestingly, a recent flurry of research has examined the hypothesis that the reverse relation may also
hold that is, that early praise or blame for an ambiguous
behavior influences peoples judgments of intentionality of
that behavior (see Sousa, 2006, leading off a special issue
on the topic). Initial, surprising findings suggesting that
there is indeed such a reverse relationship are still hotly
debated. However, if true, the hypothesis at stake would
have important implications for the legal process, because
it would cast doubt on a jurys capability to assess a defendants intent before assigning blame and guilt, as their feelings of blame for the objectionable behavior would already
bias them toward considering the behavior intentional.
Both psychologists and a new generation of experimental
philosophers (Knobe & Nichols, 2008) are now working
side by side to solve both the conceptual and empirical puzzles of this important phenomenon. Heider, himself both
philosopher and psychologist, would have appreciated the
interdisciplinary character of this research.

Person-Situation or
Personal-Impersonal?
Meanwhile, what happened to Heiders emphasis on intentionality in causal attribution work after Kelley (1967)?
Sadly, instead of returning to Heiders personal-impersonal
causality distinction, researchers (unwittingly) replaced it
with Kelleys simpler distinction between personal (or dispositional or internal) causes and situational (external)
causes. Part of this replacement may have stemmed from
the projection of a scientific model of human behavior onto
the mind of the ordinary person. This scientific model, originating in behaviorism, treated human behavior as an effect
of situational reinforcers and (for some theorists) drives
and needs. No room was left for choice and intentional
agency. Influential social psychologist Kurt Lewin elaborated on this model but still summarized human behavior
as a function of the person and the situation (Lewin,
1936, p. 12). Influenced by these scientific models, attribution researchers hypothesized that ordinary people similar 2008 Hogrefe & Huber Publishers

B.F. Malle: Heiders Legacy

ly conceptualize human behavior as fundamentally a result

of person causes and situation causes. As Kelly and Thibaut
(1978) put it: The man in the street and the scientist share
the same general approach to the interpretation of behavior.
Both assume that B = f (P, E) (p. 214). At the time, the
empirical data were not available to either confirm or disconfirm this hypothesis but one thing is clear what Heider
meant by the personal-impersonal distinction was not a division into person and situation causes.
Heider himself may have contributed to this deep misunderstanding (Malle & Ickes, 2000). His unusual choice
of words (personal vs. impersonal) when marking the intentionality distinction may have distracted his readers.
Moreover, one can find passages in the 1958 book in which
Heider, in fact, describes a simple person-environment distinction (p. 56, p. 82). However, in elaborating on this distinction (pp. 8387), Heider made clear that it was not
meant to capture the entire naive psychology of action.
Rather, he limited this dichotomy to the enabling forces that
allowed the person to successfully achieve a certain action
outcome (e.g., passing a test, reaching the other side of the
river). In his broader analysis of the naive psychology of
action, can and trying [are] the two necessary and sufficient conditions of purposive action (p. 123). Thus, an
action outcome is achieved when the person tries to and
can bring about the outcome. It is only for the can forces
that Heider applied the distinction between person factors
(ability) and environmental factors (task difficulty, luck).
Heider admitted that one could group trying with abilities
in one, big person-category and then portray the whole
model as a two-valued person-environment system. However, he did not believe that people think of action that way:
Whether a person tries to do something and whether he
has the requisite abilities to accomplish it are so significantly different in the affairs of everyday life that naive psychology has demarcated those factors (p. 82). This demarcation exists because trying reflects personal causality (the
intentional aspects of action) whereas can reflects enabling
conditions of action (p. 109), which fall under impersonal
causality. Thus, enabling factors such as ability and task
difficulty can be grouped into internal and external, but personal causality remains a solid category on its own.
One can put this important separation in terms of different explanatory questions (Malle et al., 2000; McClure &
Hilton, 1998): If we wonder how it was possible that an
action did or did not succeed (the can aspect), the answer
will lie in various enabling or hindering factors (e.g., ability, effort, task difficulty). If we wonder why the person is
trying to perform the action, the answer lies in the reasons
behind the intention (p. 111; see also pp. 125129). Note
that the why question can be posed even when the action
failed because it asks for the motives of the trying, not for
the success conditions of the action.
In an interview with Bill Ickes (1976, p. 14), Heider explicitly distinguished between these two types of question:
the attribution of outcomes to enabling factors and the attribution of intentional actions to the actors motives (i.e.,
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reasons for acting). Heider had developed the core of a

model of outcome attribution and noted that Weiners work
delivered a successful completion of this model (e.g., Weiner, Frieze, Kukla, Reed, Rest, & Rosenbaum, 1972). However, Heider never developed a model of the reason explanations of intentional action, nor did he feel that reason
explanations had been adequately treated by contemporary
attribution work (Ickes, 1976, p. 14). More recent work that
attempts to correct this situation is described next.

Recent Research on Behavior

Explanations (Causal Attributions)
The term attribution is used in multiple contexts and with
multiple meanings, sometimes referring to trait inferences,
sometimes to responsibility judgments; but the most common meaning is the one labeled causal attribution, capturing folk explanations of behavior. Kelleys (1967) covariation theory of attribution and the distinction between internal and external causes has been a mainstay in psychology
textbooks and can be considered the standard model of
causal attribution. However, Kellys model applies only to
a small subset of the psychological phenomena that ordinary people explain, namely, repeatedly occurring unintentional behaviors or experiences (Malle, 2004). Both Heider
(1958) and Jones and Davis (1965) used the term reasons
to single out a unique mode of explanation that people apply to intentional behaviors, but as mentioned above, this
insight was lost early when the person-situation (internalexternal) distinction took hold as the theoretical core of
causal attribution research.
Several scholars called for a shift from the internal-external model to one that takes into account the unique nature of reason explanations (Buss, 1978; Locke & Pennington, 1982; White, 1991). Similarly, a growing literature on
goal explanations (e.g., Lalljee & Abelson, 1983; Read,
1987; see McClure, 2002) called the standard model into
question. None of these attempts, however, succeeded in
altering the mainstream theoretical assumptions.
Stubbornly, my colleagues and I have developed an alternative model of attribution that we call the folk-conceptual theory of explanation (Malle, 1999, 2004; Malle et al.,
2000; OLaughlin & Malle, 2002). Its development was
based on the assumption that natural language is a more
valid indicator of how behavior explanations work than are
theoretically constrained (internal-external) rating scales.
Building on previous critiques of attribution theory, the
model specifies the core folk concepts that underpin peoples behavior explanations and describes the multiple
modes and types of explanation that people spontaneously
use in natural settings.
The principal concept in folk behavior explanations is, as
Heider had emphasized, intentionality that is, peoples distinction between unintentional and intentional behavior
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B.F. Malle: Heiders Legacy

(Malle, 1999). Events perceived to be unintentional are explained by causes that mechanically brought about the event;
those perceived to be intentional are typically explained by
the agents reasons for acting (Davidson, 1963; Donellan,
1967). Although people also regard reasons as causes of intentions and actions, they see them as operating very differently from other causes. Specifically, reason explanations cite
the (presumed) contents of the agents mental states (primarily beliefs and desires) in light of which, and on the grounds
of which, the agent formed an intention to act. Providing a
reason is a form of perspective taking because the explainer
tries to identify what the agent considered and weighed when
deciding to act (Malle et al., 2000).
Even though people explain most intentional behaviors
by reference to the agents reasons, they explain some of
them by pointing to factors that lay in the background of
those reasons. Explaining actions by attributing them to
these background factors constitutes a separate explanation
mode labeled causal history of reason explanation. The
causal history of reasons includes the agents unconscious,
personality, upbringing, culture, and subtle aspects of the
immediate context. Whereas reason explanations try to
capture what the agent had on his or her mind when deciding to act, causal history explanations take a step back and
try to capture processes that led up to the agents reasons
but that the agent did not actively consider in the formation
of an intention. Peoples selection between these two
modes of explanation is governed by processes of cognitive
access, impression management, and conversational parsimony. These processes account for explainers favoring
reasons over causal history explanations when presenting
themselves in a rational light (Malle et al., 2000), when
accounting for the actions of individual agents rather than
those of whole groups (OLaughlin & Malle, 2002), and
when explaining their own rather than another persons actions (Malle et al., 2007).
The third mode of explaining intentional actions does
not address motivational questions (Why? For what reason?) but the question of success conditions (How was
this possible?). These enabling factor explanations, already analyzed by Heider, are chosen when a difficult action succeeded (e.g., acing an exam) and the explainer
wants to capture what made it possible, what enabled the
agent to turn the intention into action (McClure & Hilton,
1998; Malle et al., 2000). The choice between reason explanations and enabling factor explanations is illustrated by
two straightforward findings: People virtually never use
enabling factor explanations when accounting for easy actions (because their success is not in question) or for actions
with unclear motives (because their explanation demands
clarifying those motives first). Only when people explain
an achievement, a difficult behavior, and when specifically
asked How was this possible?, do they increase the otherwise rare use of enabling factor explanations (Malle et
al., 2000).
In addition to distinguishing multiple modes of explanation, the folk-conceptual theory also identifies specific
Social Psychology 2008; Vol. 39(3):163173

types within explanation modes, in particular within reason

explanations. Explainers choose between belief reasons
and desire reasons, a choice that is once more governed by
levels of cognitive access and impression management motives (Malle et al., 2007). People also employ or omit specific linguistic tools, especially mental-state verbs such as
I want or she thinks, that allow them both to provide
an explanation and to fulfill a particular social function
for example, to distance themselves from the agents action
or his perception of the situation (e.g., Hes dressing up
because he thinks he is going on a date with her).
Audience demands (e.g., in question formulation and
impression management) reflect the social-communicative
side of explanations, which was the focus of considerable
advances in attribution work during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Hiltons (1990) innovative analysis showed that
attributions are not only in the head as cognitive operations to solve puzzles but also function as communicative
tools: They obey basic conversational norms and influence
peoples social interactions. For example, by giving an explanation, people clarify, justify, convince, or denigrate;
explanations are demanded or offered; and they impress an
audience or save one from blame (Antaki & Leudar, 1992;
Tedeschi & Reiss, 1981). This insight aligns well with Heiders attempt to study the concepts of common-sense psychology in their everyday conversational context. After all,
the tools of social perception serve to accomplish peoples
goals in social interaction.

The Importance of Mental States as

Objects of Social Perception
In chapter 2 of his 1958 book, Heider analyzed the folk
concept of a person and noted that persons are perceived
as action centers and as such can do something to us. They
can benefit or harm us intentionally, and we can benefit or
harm them. Persons have abilities, wishes, and sentiments;
they can act purposefully, and can perceive or watch us
(Heider, 1958, p. 21). Besides highlighting intentionality as
a central constituent of the person concept, Heider identifies here abilities and various mental states (wishes, sentiments, perceptions) as objects of social perception. In fact,
Heider usually singled out mental states as the most important causes that the social perceiver infers from behavior:
[M]otives, intentions, sentiments, etc. are the core processes which manifest themselves in overt behavior
(p. 34). Heider sometimes referred to traits and abilities
when talking about dispositions (e.g., p. 30, p. 80), but
mental states make up the majority of what he subsumed
under dispositional properties (pp. 3134), particularly
when explicating naive analysis of action (chapter 4).
Among mental states, the agents motives occupied a special role in the perceivers attempt to understand other people: The underlying causes of events, especially the mo 2008 Hogrefe & Huber Publishers

B.F. Malle: Heiders Legacy

tives of other persons, are the invariances of the environment that are relevant to [the perceiver]; they give meaning
to what he experiences (Heider, 1958, p. 81) and bring
order into the array of behavior (p. 32).
This emphasis on mental states reflects Heiders goal to
account for social perception in interpersonal behavior. For
when interacting with other people, it is their beliefs, desires, perceptions, and emotions that are of greatest import,
as they allow coordination of the dynamic stages of a conversation, negotiation, instruction, or persuasion.
Heiders emphasis on mental states also aligns closely
with recent research into the childs theory of mind, and it
resonates with social-psychological work on perspective
taking, empathic accuracy, and moral judgment. However,
peoples engagement with mental states has been represented far less in attribution research proper. Jones and Davis
(1965) narrowed the broad Heiderian term disposition to
refer to character traits and attitudes only, and dispositional
attribution research became trait inference research. Attribution scholars never explicitly ruled out mental states as
important objects of inference, but few included them in
their theories or research.
The focus on traits can also be seen in the choice of
methodologies. Asch (1946), one of the first social psychologists to study person perception and impression formation, introduced target persons by means of a list of personality traits, a frequently used method since. Also, many
studies on the inference of dispositions have relied on a
paradigm by Jones and Harris (1967) that tested peoples
willingness to attribute an attitude to a target person. Participants were asked to restrict their response to a check on
the researchers rating scale rather than freely explaining
why they thought the target person acted the way (s)he did.
The tide may be changing, however, as empirical research on mental state inferences is increasing in social
psychology journals (e.g., Ames, 2004; Epley, Keysar, Van
Boven, & Gilovich, 2004; Hassin, Aarts, & Ferguson,
2005; Kozak, Marsh, & Wegner, 2006; Reeder et al., 2004;
Simpson, Oria, & Ickes, 2003), and an integration of the
different approaches may not be far off (Ames et al., 2001;
Uleman et al., 2008). As one illustration of this research, I
take a new look at the well-known hypothesis of actor-observer asymmetries in attribution, which previously had a
strong trait focus.

Actor-Observer Asymmetries
Self and other are the two chief targets of social perception,
and few assumptions are as compelling as the one that cognition about oneself (the actor perspective) differs in important ways from cognition about others (the observer
perspective). Heider was keenly aware of actor-observer
asymmetries in social perception, though his observations
are scattered across the 1958 book and his Notebooks (Hei 2008 Hogrefe & Huber Publishers

169

der, 19871989). This quote, however, can be found in

most writings about Heider:
It seems that behavior in particular has such salient properties
it tends to engulf the total field rather than be confined to its
proper position as a local stimulus whose interpretation requires the additional data of a surrounding field the situation
in social perception. (Heider, 1958, p. 54).

The hypothesis that behavior engulfs the field has long

been considered the central explanation of both the actorobserver asymmetry in causal attribution (Jones & Nisbett,
1972) and the fundamental attribution error (FAE; Ross,
1977). It should be noted that these two phenomena are
distinct in that the FAE concerns unwarranted trait inferences from single behaviors, whereas the actor-observer
asymmetry concerns the differing explanations people provide for their own and other peoples behaviors. I will discuss in some detail the actor-observer asymmetry in light
of recent data and also examine some implications of this
research for the FAE.
Based on the assumption that peoples behavior explanations refer to either person or situation causes, Jones and
Nisbett (1972) proposed the classic hypothesis of an actorobserver asymmetry in explanation: There is a pervasive
tendency for actors to attribute their actions to situational
requirements, whereas observers tend to attribute the same
actions to stable personal dispositions (p. 80). This asymmetry is regarded as robust and firmly established and is
described as such in every social psychology textbook.
A careful look at the empirical evidence, however, does
not support Jones and Nisbetts hypothesis. A recent metaanalysis of 173 studies in 113 articles yielded average effect sizes of = 0.015 to = 0.095, depending on statistical
models and specific attribution scores (Malle, 2006). Corrections for possible publication bias turned the average
effect size to 0. The visual attention hypothesis, which was
inspired by Heiders dictum of the behavior engulfing the
observers field, did not fare much better. If the observers
visual attention is directed to the actors behavior whereas
the actors visual attention is directed to the situation,
switching actors and observers visual perspective should
eliminate the actor-observer asymmetry. In the initial test
of this hypothesis, Storms (1973) indeed found both the
standard actor-observer difference (d = 0.48) and the predicted reversal in the perspective switch condition (d =
0.64). However, five subsequent studies between 1975
and 1984 found no evidence either for the basic asymmetry
in the control condition ( 0.23) or for the elimination of
the asymmetry after perspective switching ( 0.29).
The classic actor-observer hypothesis, thus, looks to be
disconfirmed, and there is no indication that visual attention differences cause substantial differences in the attributions of actors and observers. Was Heider simply wrong in
his claim that behavior engulfs the observers field, and is
there really no difference between actors and observers
explanations of behavior?
Actually, Heider was correct in this respect: Social perSocial Psychology 2008; Vol. 39(3):163173

170

B.F. Malle: Heiders Legacy

ceivers attend to the other persons behavior a great deal,

much less so to their own behavior and to the other persons
mental states (Malle & Pearce, 2001). This attentional difference is also reflected in the kinds of events people wonder about and try to explain: As observers, they explain
mostly intentional observable actions; as actors, they explain mostly unintentional mental states (Malle & Knobe,
1997b). However, these patterns of attention tell us only
which events actors and observers explain (what effects
they attend to); they do not tell us how they explain them
(what causes or reasons they attend to).
Once we look at how actors and observers actually explain behavior we discover not one but three actor-observer
asymmetries. However, neither of them cuts along the person (or trait)situation dichotomy (Malle et al., 2007).
Classifying behavior explanations into the modes and types
derived from the folk-conceptual theory of explanation
(Malle, 1999, 2004), we found that (1) actors provide more
reason explanations and fewer causal history explanations
than observers do, (2) actors provide more belief reasons
and fewer desire reasons than observers do, and (3) actors
linguistically mark their belief reasons less often with a
mental state verb (such as I believe or I thought) than
observers do. Each of these attributional patterns is conceptually distinct and appears to be caused by different psychological processes, either cognitive access variables
(e.g., actors remembering their own reasons; observers
more easily guessing desires from cultural knowledge) or
impression management variables (e.g., actors making
themselves look good; observers distancing themselves
from the actor). Thus, the processes that bring about actorobserver asymmetries reflect the dual nature of behavior
explanations as both cognitive and social tools. As cognitive tools, they make sense of events; as social tools, they
manage interactions (Hilton, 2007; Malle, 2004).
Taken together, a meta-analysis of the extant research on
the classic actor-observer hypothesis and a series of new
empirical studies suggest that actors and observers do indeed differ in their behavior explanations, but such differences can be captured only with a model that takes seriously peoples own folk concepts of explanation; they cannot
be captured with a limited model of person-situation explanations.
What are the implications of these findings for the fundamental attribution error? It depends on exactly what is
meant by this term. If the FAE is described as part of the
actor-observer bias (e.g., Morris & Maisto, 2006, p. 450),
it does not exist, because actors and observers do not differ
in their person attributions, situation attributions, or trait
attributions. Similarly, if the FAE is formulated in terms of
explanation tendencies within the observer perspective
(e.g., people are inclined to offer dispositional explanations for behavior instead of situational ones, Ross & Nisbett, 1991, p. 125), its existence is not supported by the
data. This is because people spontaneously refer to dispositions (stable traits and attitudes) in only 510% percent
of all behavior explanations, whereas they refer to the sitSocial Psychology 2008; Vol. 39(3):163173

uation in about 20% of all behavior explanations (Malle,

2004; Malle et al., 2007). Predominantly, people refer to
mental states (in the form of reasons, causes, or causal histories), which make up 68% of all behavior explanations.
We might, therefore, say that people are not dispositionists;
they are mentalists.
Only the strict interpretation of the FAE as an overreadiness to make trait inferences from single behaviors is compatible with the reported results. However, we must not
expect that people make such trait inferences very frequently; for if they did, we should see these inferred traits
mentioned far more often in behavior explanations. The
FAE could still be quite harmful in those (rare) cases when
it does occur. When a persons behavior is influenced by
situational forces but observers do not notice or appreciate
the power of these forces, unwarranted trait inferences may
ensue, which can then lead to such social consequences as
rejection, aggression, blame, or punishment. However, we
do not know how many behaviors are, as a matter of fact,
more strongly influenced by the situation than observers
believe; nor do we know how often, outside the laboratory,
observers make a confident trait inference in those circumstances. Therefore, and in light of the surprising fate of the
classic actor-observer hypothesis, it seems reasonable to
take a fresh and critical look at the exact factors that underlie the fundamental attribution error (see Gawronski,
2004; Krull, 2001).

Conclusion
Fritz Heiders (1958) book The Psychology of Interpersonal Behavior has an uncontested place in the history of social
psychology. His insights were deep and numerous about
the role of inference in social perception, the principle of
cognitive consistency, the impact of folk theories, and the
nature of the social mind that tries to make sense of other
minds. As a result, much of modern social psychology has
been influenced by Heiders creative, prophetic thinking.
However, we should let the prophet speak in his own
words. Then we will realize that the things he said often
differ from the things that are so commonly attributed to
him. Perhaps we should name this the exegetic attribution
error: readily ascribing claims to Heider that he did not
make while overlooking important claims that he did make.

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L.J. Moses, & D.A. Baldwin (Eds.), Intentions and intentionality: Foundations of social cognition (pp. 149170). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Bertram F. Malle
Department of Psychology
Institute of Cognitive and Decision Sciences
1227 University of Oregon
Eugene OR 97403-1227
USA
Tel. +1 541 346-0475
Fax +1 541 346-4911
E-mail bfmalle@uoregon.edu

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