Gestalt psychologist Fritz Heider is often described as the "father of attribution theory",[2] during the early years of the 20th century.
In his 1920's dissertation Heider addressed the problem of phenomenology: why perceivers attribute the properties such as color to perceived objects, when those properties are mental constructs? Heider's answer that perceivers attribute that which they "directly" sense – vibrations in the air for instance – to an object they construe as causing those sense data. "Perceivers faced with sensory data thus see the perceptual object as 'out there', because they attribute the sensory data to their underlying causes in the world."[3]
Heider extended this idea to attributions about people: "motives, intentions, sentiments ... the core processes which manifest themselves in overt behavior".[4]