Heider's The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations (1958) was written in collaboration with the
uncredited Beatrice Wright, a founder of rehabilitiation psychology. Wright was available to collaborate
because the University of Kansas's nepotism rules prohibited her from a position at the University (her
husband, Erik Wright, was a professor), and the Ford Foundation gave Heider funds and assistance to
complete the project. (Wright is credited only in the Foreword; she later went on to become an endowed
professor of psychology at the University of Kansas).

The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations essentially founded the modern field of social cognition. A
giant of social psychology, Heider had few students, but his book on social perception had many readers,
and its impact continues into the 21st Century, having been cited nearly 6,800 times.

The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations contains several influential ideas. Heider argued that social
perception follows many of the same rules of physical object perception, and that the organization found
in object perception is also found in social perception. Because biases in object perception sometimes
lead to errors (e.g., optical illusions), one might expect to find that biases in social perception
likewise lead to errors (e.g., underestimating the role social factors and overestimating the effect of
personality and attitudes on behavior).

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