riends differed in what they perceived to be the reasons or the causes of the dispute. Understanding how these differences came about in people's ascription of causes became the bulk of his life work.
In his early work, Heider (1944, 1958) proposed that the processes of causal attribution were derived from two strong human motives: (1) the need to form a coherent understanding of the world, and (2) the need to control one's environment. In order to satisfy these motives, Heider stated that people needed to be able to predict how others would behave. For example, before a boy decides to kiss his date goodnight, he would want to know whether she will like the kiss or punch him in the jaw for being rude.
Prediction, Heider said, was also important with respect to people's second motive, that of attaining a satisfactory level of control over the environment. To control out diet, for example, we need to know that a restaurant will deliver the salad we ordered and not a chocolate milk shake.
What Heider proposed was that in order to make predictions, a person must formulate at least an elementary theory of human behavior. This search for explanations for behavior and the resultant individual theory of human behavior Heider termed "naive psychology." In other words, naive psychology refers to the general theory of human behavior held by the ordinary person.
Over the years, Heider's notion of naive psychology has been modified, refined and expanded. For example, Weiner (1980, 1982) has connected attributional processes to emotional processes.
In particular, Winder states that causal attributions are determinants of our feelings, attitudes, and behavior. For example, anger usually results when something negative happens to us and we view it as being under another's control. An illustration of this can be seen in that of a man waiting for a bus in the rain. The gutter is flowing with water and a driver passes by spla...