R. Reisenzein & I.

Mchitarjan: Tracing
Social Meinong
Psychology
© 2008 ’s Influence
Hogrefe
2008; Vol.
& Huber on Heider
39(3):141–150
Publishers

“The Teacher Who had the Greatest

Influence on My Thinking”
Tracing Meinong’s Influence on Heider
Rainer Reisenzein and Irina Mchitarjan
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

University of Greifswald, Germany

Abstract. According to Heider, some of his ideas about common-sense psychology presented in The Psychology of Interpersonal Rela-
tions (Heider, 1958) originally came from his academic teacher, Alexius Meinong. However, Heider makes no reference to Meinong in
his book. To clarify Meinong’s influence on Heider, we compare Heider’s explication of common-sense psychology with Meinong’s
writings, in particular those on ethics. Our results confirm that Heider’s common-sense psychology is informed by Meinong’s psycho-
logical analyses in several respects: Heider adopts aspects of Meinong’s theory of emotion, his theory of value, and his theory of respon-
sibility attribution. In addition, Heider more or less continues Meinong’s method of psychological inquiry. Thus, even without Meinong’s
name attached, many aspects of Meinong’s psychology found their way into today’s social psychology via Heider. Unknowingly, some
of us have been Meinongians all along.

Keywords: attribution, common-sense psychology, Heider, history of psychology, Meinong

Fritz Heider was the last doctoral student of Alexius Mei-
nong (1853–1920), who was professor of philosophy at the
University of Graz (Austria) from 1882 to 1920. A student
of Franz Brentano, Meinong has come to be regarded as
one of Austria’s foremost philosophers. He is best known
today for his so-called “theory of objects” (Gegenstands-
theorie), an early form of logical semantics (Chrudzimski,
2007), though he also made important contributions to oth-
er areas of philosophical and psychological inquiry. To-
gether with his student Christian von Ehrenfels, Meinong
founded the so-called “Second Austrian school of value
theory” (Eaton, 1930; Fabian & Simons, 1986). With his
students and coworkers (e.g., Benussi, Ehrenfels, Witasek),
Meinong established the Graz school of Gestalt psycholo-
gy. He also proposed a sophisticated cognitive theory of
emotion (see Reisenzein, Meyer, & Schützwohl, 2003).
Last but not least, Meinong founded the first experimental
psychology laboratory of Austria in 1894.
Meinong’s influence on Heider has not been investigat-
ed to date. However, such an influence may be expected,
given their teacher-student relationship. The question that
occupies us in this article is how strong Meinong’s influ-
ence on Heider really was and which topics it concerned.
Heider himself gave a partial answer to these questions in
his autobiography: “Alexius Meinong was certainly the
teacher who had the greatest influence on my thinking”
(Heider, 1983, p. 21). Describing Meinong as a “well-orga-
nized person with extraordinary intelligence” who “had a
commanding presence,” Heider reports that he attended
Meinong’s lectures and seminars for several years. The top-
ics treated there concerned epistemology, the theory of
probability, and the theory of value. Heider also reports that
he studied Meinong’s epistemological treatise On the Em-
pirical Basis of Our Knowledge (Meinong, 1906a) in depth
for his dissertation and that the first part of the dissertation
(Heider, 1920), “developed Meinong’s thinking and used
his vocabulary, which I had really mastered by that time”
(Heider, 1983, p. 37). (An essay based on the dissertation
was published in 1926 as Ding and Medium [Heider,
1926]). Although some aspects of Meinong’s philosophy –
particularly his theory of objects – seemed to Heider “cold
and lifeless,” Meinong’s thoughts about “the more concrete
questions of probability and value, and . . . his more de-
tailed discussions of the common-sense versions of these
ideas” appealed to Heider, who notes: “I must have learned
a lot from his [Meinong’s] reflections on these problems”
(Heider, 1983, pp. 21–22; italics in the original). In an in-
terview given several years earlier to the editors of New
Directions in Attribution Research (Harvey, Ickes, & Kidd,
1976), Heider was even more explicit. Referring to Mei-
nong as “a great philosopher . . . who was also a psycholo-
gist,” Heider stated: “Now I realize that some of the ideas
that I developed about common-sense psychology original-
ly came from him” (Harvey et al., 1976, pp. 5–6).
Given these hints by Heider, we became curious about
which “ideas about common-sense psychology” he had in
mind and hence, which aspects of Meinong’s psychology
may have found their way into contemporary psychology
via Heider. Unfortunately, Heider did not elaborate his
hints, and The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations (PIR;

© 2008 Hogrefe & Huber Publishers Social Psychology 2008; Vol. 39(3):141–150
DOI 10.1027/1864-9335.39.3.141
 142 R. Reisenzein & I. Mchitarjan: Tracing Meinong’s Influence on Heider
Heider, 1958) contains no reference to Meinong. We there-
fore decided to search for an empirical answer by compar-
ing PIR to Meinong’s writings. The most promising sourc-
es, by Heider’s own account but also in terms of the topics
covered, seemed to be Meinong’s writings on ethics. Ethics
or “practical philosophy” as it is often called, has been tra-
ditionally concerned with interpersonal relations: This is
the field of philosophical inquiry where philosophers since
Plato and Aristotle discussed topics such as proper conduct,
egoism versus altruism, responsibility, values, obligation
and norms, and the like – topics that also figure prominent-
ly in common-sense psychology (e.g., Heider,1958; Wei-
ner, 1995, 2006).
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
Meinong’s first and perhaps most influential (Fabian
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
& Simons, 1986) publication on ethics was the book Psy-
chologisch-ethische Untersuchungen zur Werth-Theorie
[Psychological-Ethical Investigations in Value Theory,
PIV] (1894). Although little known today, Meinong’s
book, which may well contain the first elaborated general
theory of value, had a significant influence on the subse-
quent development of value theory, particularly among
Anglo-American scholars (e.g., Eaton, 1930; Findlay,
1963; Mackenzie, 1895; Perry, 1926; Urban, 1909; see
also, Satris, 1982). Some of the ideas in PIV, in particular
the theory of value and the associated theory of emotion,
were further developed by Meinong in subsequent publi-
cations (e.g., Meinong, 1906b, 1910, 1912, 1917, 1923).
However, most of the “ideas about common-sense psy-
chology” to which Heider (in Harvey et al., 1976) likely
referred as having been informed by Meinong can al-
ready be found in PIV. For this reason, we focus on the
comparison of PIR and PIV. Despite the limitations of
our study entailed by this restriction, we believe we were
able to capture main lines of reception of Meinong by
Heider (for additional information, see Reisenzein & Ru-
dolph, this issue; Schönpflug, this issue). We first com-
pare Meinong’s and Heider’s general aims and methods
in PIV and PIR, respectively, and then turn to three spe-
cific areas: Emotions, the attribution of responsibility,
and the theory of value and ought.
Meinong’s and Heider’s Aims and
Methods
Meinong’s (1894) aim in Psychological-Ethical Investiga-
tions in Value Theory was to develop a general theory of
value (Part I) and, on that basis, a theory of moral value,
which Meinong regards as the core part of ethics (Part II).
As reflected in the book’s title, this is as much a psycho-
logical investigation as it is a meta-ethical one. Central to
Meinong’s theory of value is the idea that value is intimate-
ly connected to emotion and – as Meinong later granted to
1 All translations from German are the authors’.
Social Psychology 2008; Vol. 39(3):141–150
his student Ehrenfels (1897) – to desire. Emotions and de-
sires, Meinong believes, are the basic value experiences,
the original states of consciousness in which we become
aware, in a prereflective way, of the value of things. To
understand value, Meinong argues, one therefore needs to
turn to psychology, specifically to the study of emotions.
Accordingly, Meinong first presents a fairly detailed theory
of emotions and then proceeds to clarify the relation of
emotions to value judgments and to value in general. Hav-
ing laid this basis, Meinong then “works out a fascinating
formal theory of moral value, duty, and responsibility, at
times working along lines started by Hutcheson and Adam
Smith” (Findlay, 1963, p. 275).
Although Meinong saw himself firmly rooted in the em-
pirical tradition of psychology established by his teacher
Brentano (1874/1955), he did not perform systematic ob-
servations or experiments (in today’s sense) to support his
psychological claims in PIV. Rather, Meinong’s “empirical
method” was a combination of introspection, thought ex-
perimentation, logical argumentation, and the analysis of
common-sense notions and ordinary language concepts.
Regarding the latter method, Eaton (1930) writes: “Mei-
nong and Ehrenfels had agreed that one of the duties in-
cumbent on the student of values was to clarify and define
– not neglect – the ideas and notions involved in the every-
day language of the common people” (p. 180). Kindinger
(1968) even suggests that Meinong’s method in PIV is best
characterized as a “methodical querying of moral common-
sense.”1 Indeed, Meinong (1894) frequently refers to com-
mon-sense as an important source of inspiration or support.
For example, in his discussion of value, Meinong repeat-
edly appeals to the common use of the term “value.” To
support a proposed division of the moral value scale, he
argues that it conforms to “the sound intuition of the theo-
retically completely naïve person” (PIV, p. 89). He refers
explicitly to the “moral common-sense” (PIV, p. 181) and
discusses the “vernacular concept of ought outside of and
within morality” (PIV, p. 183). Thus, in part at least, Mei-
nong’s approach in PIV can indeed be interpreted as the
attempt to explicate common-sense intuitions in the do-
main of practical philosophy; or as Findlay (1963, p. vii)
put it, to “formalize ordinary morality.” This is also how
Fritz Heider interpreted Meinong’s endeavor in PIV. In a
note referring to PIV in his Notebooks (edited by M. Be-
nesh-Weiner), Heider (1988, § 105) wrote: “Meinong uses
mainly classification, a few mathematical models, explica-
tion of everyday terms.”
The explication of everyday psychological terms – and
thereby of the common-sense psychology contained in ordi-
nary language – is how Heider’s (1958) aim in PIR has come
to be described. However, it is important to note that Heider
regarded the explication of common-sense psychology only
as a means to the larger end of constructing a conceptual
framework for “the scientific study of interpersonal rela-
tions” (PIR, 1958, p. 3). Influenced by philosophers Cassirer
© 2008 Hogrefe & Huber Publishers
 R. Reisenzein & I. Mchitarjan: Tracing Meinong’s Influence on Heider
and Carnap and by his friend Kurt Lewin (see Schönpflug,
this issue; and Heider, 1958, pp. 7–9), Heider was convinced
that science requires a precise, preferably formal language
(see also Laucken, 1999).2 Together with his wife, he had
translated Lewin’s Grundzüge der topologischen Psycholo-
gie (Principles of Topological Psychology) into English
(Lewin, 1936) and was impressed by Lewin’s attempts to
utilize mathematical language (topology and vector theory)
to represent mental states and their contents (the “psycholog-
ical field”). However, Heider could not find a direct way to
apply Lewin’s field theory to the representation of interper-
sonal relations: “It got too complicated” (Heider in Harvey et
al., 1976, p. 8). Still, Heider remained convinced that the “for-
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
mal approach” to psychology endorsed by Lewin was right.
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
Lewin only had made an unfortunate choice when opting for
field theory as the formal language of psychology, because it
was unsuited for social psychology (as was also argued by a
reviewer of Lewin’s book [Garrett, 1939]). Heider’s ultimate
aim in PIR is to do better than Lewin: To provide a “scientific
language that . . . is broader and more flexible than these other
psychological languages [e.g., topology], and at the same
time . . . sufficiently exact to permit analysis of a wide variety
of commonly experienced human interactions” (PIR, 1958,
p. 10). Believing that a great deal of relevant knowledge con-
cerning such a scientific language is already available in our
implicit common-sense psychology, Heider proposes to ex-
plicate “the implicit theoretical models of perception, action,
motivation, sentiments, and norms” (Heider, 1958, p. 298), as
one method to arrive at the desired scientific language for
psychology. Although Heider never formalized his explica-
tion, he saw this as a desirable goal and took first steps in this
direction (see the appendix to PIR).
When comparing Heider’s (1958) and Meinong’s (1894)
aims and methods, it appears that they are not far apart:
Both theorists wanted to establish the foundations of a sci-
entific psychology, either as an end in itself (Heider), or
with the additional aim of providing a basis for ethics (Mei-
nong). And, as one method to construct a scientific lan-
guage for psychology, Heider returned to Meinong’s meth-
od of psychological inquiry. As will be seen, he also adopt-
ed some of the results that Meinong had obtained with this
method.
Meinong and Heider on Emotions
Meinong’s Theory of the Judgment Emotions
General Emotion Theory
Following his teacher Brentano, Meinong (1894) begins
his analysis of the emotions with the assumption that emo-
tions are object-directed (see also Meinong, 1906b; Rei-
2 Heider’s desire for precision was apparently kindled by Meinong. “The lectures seemed to come out of his mouth ready to be published.
After getting used to Meinong’s talks everybody else seemed sloppy, messy and diffuse” (Heider, 1970, p. 132).
© 2008 Hogrefe & Huber Publishers
143
senzein et al., 2003). For example, if one is happy, one is
happy about something (e.g., that a friend came to visit);
if one is afraid, one is afraid of something (e.g., that the
friend might have had an accident) and so on. This intro-
spectively ascertained fact, Meinong argues, has a
straightforward but far-reaching implication: It entails
that emotions presuppose cognitions. More precisely, any
object-directed emotion presupposes, for its existence, a
cognitive representation of its object. Furthermore, Mei-
nong argues, emotions differ from each other primarily –
that is, beyond the basic distinction between positive and
negative feelings – in terms of the cognitions that form
their “psychological presupposition” (PIV, p. 34).
Meinong elaborated this cognitive theory of emotions in
greatest detail for the so-called judgment-based emotions
(Urteilsgefühle). These include most emotions distinguished
in ordinary language, such as joy, sorrow, pity and joy for
another person, hope and fear, anger, guilt, and shame. Ac-
cording to Meinong, the judgment-based emotions are char-
acterized and distinguished from other emotions by two main
features: (1) They have propositions, or states of affairs, as
objects, and (2) they presuppose beliefs or judgments about
their objects. For example, joy about a state of affairs (e.g.,
Schmidt is elected for president) presupposes the belief that
this state of affairs obtains (e.g., that Schmidt was, indeed,
elected).
Everyday experience indicates, however, that not every
belief engenders an emotion and that the same belief – that a
particular state of affairs obtains – can cause joy in some
people and sorrow in others. Meinong recognized that, to
explain these facts, another mental precondition of emotions
needs to be postulated. Although he did not discuss this ques-
tion in depth, it appears that he thought that in many (though
not all) cases, this additional precondition of emotions is a
motivational state, a desire for (wanting) or an aversion
against (“diswanting”) the state of affairs in question (Mei-
nong 1906b, 1917; see also, Höfler, 1897). Thus, joy about a
state of affairs x is experienced if one believes x and desires
x; sorrow about x is experienced if one believes x and is aver-
sive against or “diswants” x. In the typical case, one first
comes to desire or to diswant a state of affairs x. Subsequent-
ly, on the basis of perception or inference, one acquires the
belief that x obtains. Together, the desire or diswant and the
belief then cause a feeling of pleasure or displeasure directed
at the same object, x. This object-directed feeling of pleasure
or displeasure is the emotion of joy or sorrow, respectively,
or at least constitutes the core of these emotional experiences
(Meinong, 1906b).
Distinctions Between Emotions
In Meinong’s view, pleasure and displeasure about a state
of affairs are the two basic forms of the judgment-based
Social Psychology 2008; Vol. 39(3):141–150
 144 R. Reisenzein & I. Mchitarjan: Tracing Meinong’s Influence on Heider
emotions. That is, all other judgment-based emotions are
subtypes or variants of these basic emotions. Their differ-
ences are mainly due to differences in their cognitive pre-
conditions.
Specifically, Meinong (1894) proposed that belief
strength (degree of certainty) distinguishes hope and fear
from joy and sorrow: If one is uncertain whether a desired
state of affairs obtains, one feels hope rather than joy; if
one is uncertain whether an undesired state of affairs ob-
tains, one feels fear rather than sorrow. According to
Meinong, the certain-uncertain distinction reflects a dif-
ference in the mode of the mental state, a difference in
the manner of believing (believing firmly vs. less than
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
firmly). However, most of the differences between judg-
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
ment-based emotions are due to differences in the prop-
ositional contents of the beliefs and desires underlying
the emotions. For example, if a cognized state of affairs
concerns one’s own wellbeing, one feels joy or sorrow.
In contrast, if this state of affairs concerns another per-
son’s emotional experiences, one experiences “emotions
of sympathy or antipathy” (PIV, p. 47) – so-called by
Meinong because the hedonic tone or valence of the ex-
periencer’s emotion agrees (emotions of sympathy) or
disagrees (emotions of antipathy) with that of the per-
ceived emotion of the other person.
The emotions of sympathy are joy for another person
and pity. Joy for another person is felt if one believes that
the other experiences a positive feeling and desires this
perceived fact; pity for another if one believes that the
other experiences a negative feeling and diswants this
state of affairs. The emotions of antipathy are envy/re-
sentment and Schadenfreude (joy at another’s misfor-
tune). Envy or resentment is felt if one believes that an-
other person experiences a positive feeling and diswants
this perceived fact; Schadenfreude is felt if one believes
that another person experiences a negative feeling and if
one desires this state of affairs. Of particular importance
to ethics, the judgment-based emotions also comprise the
traditional “moral emotions” (e.g., guilt, indignation, and
moral elevation), which Meinong (1894) defines in gen-
eral terms as feelings of moral approval and moral disap-
proval of an action or actor.
Functions of Emotions
Meinong proposes that the main function of emotions is
informational, or epistemic: Emotions provide the expe-
riencer with information about the value of objects. More
than that: According to Meinong, emotions (and desires)
constitute the primary value experiences; they are the ba-
sic, original forms of becoming aware of the value of ob-
jects and states of affairs.
3 Compare Meinong (1917, p. 96): “The desire is annihilated as soon as the judgment [that the desired state of affairs obtains] replaces the
assumption; this is the subjective aspect of what is called . . . the fulfillment of the desire.”
Social Psychology 2008; Vol. 39(3):141–150
Heider’s Explication of the Common-sense
Psychology of Emotions
Pleasure and Displeasure
Heider deals with emotions in several chapters of PIR. In
Chapter 5, entitled “Desire and Pleasure,” Heider proposes:
“In naive psychology, the concept desire . . . is linked to plea-
sure upon the fulfillment of the desire, thus: Desire for [an
object] x plus obtaining x leads to pleasure . . . when a desire
exists, its fulfillment will be satisfying” (PIR, pp. 129–130).
As Heider makes clear a few pages later, this postulate applies
to psychological reality, not to objective reality: “It is not the
actual occurrence of the [desired] event but rather the belief
that the event has occurred that is the necessary and sufficient
cause for . . . enjoyment” (p. 145). Hence, enjoyment is
“based on a . . . judgment” (PIR, p. 146), that can be acquired
in various ways: “He may see it happen; he may infer its
occurrence from other events; he may be told about it” (PIR,
p. 144). As soon as we become convinced that a desired event
has happened, “this wish will cease and enjoyment take its
place” (p. 144).3
Although the desire for x and the belief that x obtains
are sufficient conditions for pleasure about x (PIR, p. 144),
desire is not a necessary condition for pleasure (PIR,
p. 132). This, Heider proposes, is suggested by the fact that
emotions can be caused by entirely unexpected events, like
pleasure about a happy surprise beyond our fondest wishes
or displeasure about disasters we had never thought of as
possible (PIR, p. 132). An analogous argument for the non-
necessity of desire for judgment-based emotions was made
by Meinong’s student Höfler in a textbook where he de-
scribed Meinong’s emotion theory (Höfler, 1897, p. 404).
Other Emotions
Like Meinong, Heider assumes that the differences between
emotions (beyond positive and negative) are mainly due to
differences in their cognitive preconditions. Specifically, in
general agreement with Meinong, though less general in his
formulation, Heider (PIR, p. 141) proposes that according to
common-sense psychology, “hope arises when the person,
separated from x and desiring x, believes that x will come
within his reach” (PIR, p. 141), whereas “fear arises when the
person, in contact with and enjoying x, recognizes the possi-
bility of losing x” (PIR, p. 141). Furthermore, in Chapter 11
of PIR, entitled “Reaction to the Lot of the Other Person,”
Heider proposes that “four types of [emotional] reaction to
the lot of the other person may be schematically distin-
guished” (p. 277): Sympathetic enjoyment, sympathy or
compassion, envy, and malicious joy or Schadenfreude.
Sympathetic enjoyment is pleasure about the perceived fact
that another person has a positive experience; or as Heider
© 2008 Hogrefe & Huber Publishers
 R. Reisenzein & I. Mchitarjan: Tracing Meinong’s Influence on Heider
puts it: “that o has a positive experience is positive for p”
(PIR, p. 277). Compassion is displeasure about the fact that o
has a negative experience; envy is displeasure about o’s hav-
ing a positive experience; and Schadenfreude is pleasure
about o’s displeasure. Echoing Meinong’s (1894) distinction
between “emotions of sympathy” and “emotions of antipa-
thy,” Heider suggests that in sympathetic enjoyment and
compassion “the relation between p and o is syntonic or con-
cordant” (PIR, p. 277), whereas the emotions of envy and
Schadenfreude “show a discordance or antagonism between
p and o” (PIR, pp. 277–278).
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
The Function of Emotions
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
Like Meinong, Heider claims that “neither desire nor plea-
sure are merely states with a peculiar quality; both have cog-
nitive aspects,” with “one kind of cognitive meaning [be-
ing]. . . the value relation between p and x” (PIR, pp. 137–
138). Heider explains:
“Desire and pleasure imply the apprehension of a quality of x,
the quality of being satisfying to the person.” (PIR, p. 138) “It
is as if the positive quality of the object is discerned through
such different avenues as remembering with pleasure, enjoy-
ing, desiring, hoping for, etc. We see, so to speak, the same
hedonic property of the object from different points of view”
(PIR, p. 141).
To summarize, many aspects of Heider’s “explication of
common-sense psychology” in the field of emotions corre-
spond to Meinong’s theory of the judgment-based emo-
tions. Heider’s proposals concerning the link between be-
lief and desire on the one hand, and pleasure/displeasure
on the other hand; his distinction between joy and hope and
between sorrow and fear; his analysis of the emotional re-
actions to the lot of others; and his assumption that emo-
tions serve cognitive functions by providing information
about value–all these assumptions correspond fairly well
to Meinong’s views in PIV. The main difference is that, in
the process of reception, some of the precision and detail
of the Meinongian original got lost.
Meinong and Heider on the
Attribution of Responsibility
and on Moral Emotions
Meinong’s Theory of Moral Imputation
In Chapter IV of the second part of PIV, Meinong (1894)
examines the mental processes involved in the moral im-
putation [moralische Zurechnung] of actions. “Moral im-
4 Meinong’s analysis of the attribution of responsibility may have been influenced by his knowledge of law, as he began his University studies
as a law student. Interestingly, the main translation of “Zurechnung” and the verb “zurechnen” into English is “attribution” and “to attribute,”
respectively.
© 2008 Hogrefe & Huber Publishers
145
putation” is a traditional term for the attribution of retro-
spective responsibility (Werner, 2002; see also Heider,
1944). Meinong proposes that the process of responsibility
attribution comprises a cognitive and an emotional compo-
nent.4
The Cognitive Component of Moral Imputation
The cognitive component of moral imputation (responsi-
bility attribution) comprises the “cognitive operations that
are necessary to clarify the relation between the given ac-
tion and the personality that stands behind it” (PIV, p. 206).
At issue is the question to which degree the action emerged
from the actor’s attitude and what the nature of this attitude
is – more precisely, to which degree the action was moti-
vated by the good-will or ill-will of the actor, his altruistic
or antialtruistic motives. To clarify the conditions under
which a person is held responsible for an action, Meinong
lists the most important cases in which an action cannot be
imputed to a person, as well as the most important factors
that reduce responsibility.
Meinong proposes that a person cannot be held respon-
sible (1) when no intention was present at all, such as omis-
sions due to paralysis or unconsciousness, and (2) when an
intention and hence an action was present, but the conse-
quences of the action were “different from what was willed,
or at least foreseen (this pertains specifically to harm
caused)” (PIV, p. 197). In contrast, when the consequences
of an action were foreseen or even intended, responsibility
is in principle always present. Still, the degree of responsi-
bility may be reduced even in these cases if (3) “the willing
cannot be regarded as an expression of the impersonal [i.e.,
the morally relevant] concerns of the actor, either because
the willing is not of a moral nature at all, or because it must
be attributed to different causes, that is, to external (phys-
ical or mental) duress in the widest sense” (PIV, p. 197)
such as temptation or social pressure. Meinong then dis-
cusses in some detail the various factors that reduce respon-
sibility.
The Emotional Component of Moral Imputation
Meinong proposes that the cognitive operation of respon-
sibility ascription is followed and “completed” by an emo-
tional reaction. This emotion is a “moral worth feeling,” a
feeling of moral approval or disapproval of the action or
actor. As already mentioned, feelings of moral approval
and disapproval belong to the class of judgment-based
emotions. Specifically, they are caused by the judgment
that the other person is responsible. According to Meinong,
these emotions are more intense (a) the higher the positive
Social Psychology 2008; Vol. 39(3):141–150
 146 R. Reisenzein & I. Mchitarjan: Tracing Meinong’s Influence on Heider
or negative value of the action (or outcome), and (b) “the
more this action can be taken to be an emanation of the
actor’s personality” (PIV, p. 206), that is, the higher the per-
ceived degree of responsibility. of the actor.
Heider’s Theory of Responsibility Attribution
and its Emotional Consequences
Responsibility Attribution
One of the first ideas from PIR subjected to empirical test
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
was Heider’s theory of responsibility attribution (Shaw &
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
Sulzer, 1964). This theory subsequently became perhaps
the most influential theory of the attribution of responsibil-
ity in social and developmental psychology (McGraw,
1987) and stimulated numerous empirical studies (e.g., Fin-
cham & Jaspars, 1980; Weiner, 1995, 2006).
Heider proposes that the process of responsibility ascrip-
tion encompasses the causal attribution of the action to per-
sonal versus environmental factors, and that attributed re-
sponsibility depends on the relative importance of the en-
vironmental factors: “In general, the more [situational
factors] are felt to influence the action, the less the person
is held responsible” (PIR, p. 113). Heider then proposes
five successive stages of responsibility attribution that rep-
resent increasingly sophisticated, cognitively demanding
levels of attribution. These levels are as follows (with la-
bels taken from Fincham & Jaspars, 1980): At the most
primitive level 1 (association), a person p is held responsi-
ble for any outcome x with which p is connected in any
way. At level 2 (causality), p is held responsible for x when-
ever p physically caused x, even if x was not p’s aim, and
even if p did not and could not have foreseen x. At level 3
(foreseeability), p is held responsible for x whenever p
physically caused and could have foreseen x, even if x was
not his goal. At level 4 (intention), p is held responsible for
x whenever p intended to produce x. Finally, at level 5 (jus-
tification), p is held (fully) responsible for x only if p in-
tended to produce x and p’s intention was not, in turn,
forced upon p by the environment, as is the case for exam-
ple in “traitorous acts committed under duress” (PIR,
p. 114). In the latter cases, responsibility is “at least shared
by the environment” (PIR, p. 114).
If one compares Heider’s theory of responsibility ascrip-
tion to Meinong’s assumptions about the cognitive compo-
nent of moral imputation, it becomes evident that Heider
and Meinong discuss the same topic and arrive at highly
similar conclusions. The main difference is that Heider
concentrates on the conditions that allow the ascription of
responsibility, whereas Meinong focuses on the conditions
that eliminate or reduce responsibility. According to Mei-
nong, responsibility can be ascribed only when the out-
come of an action was intended and foreseen by the person.
5 Later, however, Heider distanced himself from the developmental interpretation of his theory (Fincham & Jaspars, 1980).
Social Psychology 2008; Vol. 39(3):141–150
Even in these cases, responsibility is reduced (though not
abolished) when the intention was not produced by the per-
son’s morally relevant attitudes, but by “physical or mental
duress in the widest sense” (PIV, p. 197). Thus, Meinong’s
case 3 comprises Heider’s level 4 (intention) and level 5
(justification). As to Heider’s remaining levels, Meinong
classifies these as cases in which responsibility is absent,
whereas Heider speaks of responsibility “at a lower level.”
However, this difference is not a true disagreement about
the meaning of “responsibility,” because Heider links the
lower levels of responsibility to earlier levels of cognitive
development that presumably reflect an imperfect mastery
of the adult responsibility concept. Meinong’s case 1 cor-
responds to Heider’s level 1 (association); Meinongs case
2 subsumes Heider’s level 2 (causality) and 3 (foreseeabil-
ity). In contrast to Heider, Meinong makes no assumptions
about the developmental course of the responsibility con-
cept. In fact, Heider adopted this aspect of his theory from
Piaget (1932; see Heider, 1958, p. 113). Thus, Heider’s
“common-sense theory of responsibility attribution” can be
regarded as a combination of Meinong’s and Piaget’s views
on the subject.5
Emotional Reactions to Benefit and Harm
Like Meinong, Heider assumes that ascriptions of respon-
sibility for an action often cause emotional reactions in
those affected by the action or in onlookers. Heider makes
these proposals in Chapter 10 of PIR, where he analyzes
reactions to benefit and harm received from others. Heider
specifically mentions two emotions that would be classi-
fied by Meinong as emotions of (possibly moral) approval
and disapproval: Gratitude (as a reaction to benefit) and
feelings of revenge (as a reaction to harm). Heider proposes
that for both emotions, “attribution to source and intention”
(PIR, p. 265) is of utmost importance. He explains:
“An everyday fact is that the feelings of both revenge and grat-
itude become markedly attenuated, if not completely dissipat-
ed, upon the discovery that the harm or the benefit was not the
true goal of the agent. We do not feel grateful to a person who
helps us fortuitously, or because he was forced to do so, or
because he was obliged to do so. Gratitude is determined by
the will, the intention, of the benefactor. Attribution to source
and intention has similar significance in the case of revenge”
(PIR, p. 265).
Although Heider does not explicitly refer to responsibility
in this context, his discussion implies that, at least in adults,
feelings of gratitude and revenge arise only to the extent
that one holds the other person responsible for a received
benefit or harm at Heider’s level 4 (intention). If responsi-
bility is ascribed at a lower level (unintended benefit or
harm), gratitude and revenge are reduced or abolished. The
same happens when intentionality is present but mitigating
© 2008 Hogrefe & Huber Publishers
 R. Reisenzein & I. Mchitarjan: Tracing Meinong’s Influence on Heider
circumstances prevail (level 5, justification). Hence, like
Meinong, Heider assumes that feelings of moral approval
and disapproval, such as gratitude and revenge, presuppose
the ascription of responsibility and increase in intensity
with the degree of responsibility ascribed.
Meinong and Heider on Value and
Ought
Meinong on Value and Ought
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
As mentioned, Meinong (1894) proposed that values are
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
psychologically grounded in emotions. Specifically, emo-
tions are the means by which the value of objects is appre-
hended. But what are the values themselves? Are they ob-
jectively existing properties of objects, or just projections
of our emotions onto objects? In the words of Plato, do we
like something because it is good, or is it good because we
like it? Meinong (1894) takes an intermediate position
here, by proposing a dispositional theory of value (see
Smith, 1989): According to Meinong, the value of an object
is the object’s capacity to elicit emotional experiences
(feelings of worth) under normal circumstances: “An ob-
ject has value if it has the capacity to serve as the actual
basis of a feeling of worth for the sufficiently oriented, nor-
mally constituted person” (PIV, p. 25; “feelings of worth”
are judgment-based emotions). Hence, already in this early
phase of his thinking about value, Meinong was not entirely
subjectivist about value (Reicher, 2005). In later years, in
connection with the development of his theory of objects,
Meinong’s (1912, 1917, 1923) value theory became decid-
edly “objectivist.” According to the revised version of the
theory, values, although apprehended through personal
emotional experiences, are neither personal nor relative,
but fully objective properties of objects. Furthermore, Mei-
nong now granted to Ehrenfels (1897) that not only emo-
tions but also desires belong to the primary experiences of
value.
Based on his general theory of value, Meinong (1894)
in the second part of PIV sets out to clarify the notion of
moral value. According to Meinong, the moral goodness
or badness of an action is its capacity to elicit feelings of
approval or disapproval in an impartial observer. These
feelings are based on the impartial observer’s judgment of
responsibility, which (as noted) reflects the degree to which
the action is seen as resulting from the good-will versus
ill-will of the actor.
In Chapter III of the second part of PIV, Meinong exam-
ines the “vernacular concept of ought outside of and within
morality” (p. 183): “Generally speaking . . . the term ‘ought
to’ means the complex fact that there is a willing or a desire
directed at the action or intention of the person who ‘ought
to’. The person who ought to and the person who wills can
be the same subject, although it is more natural if they are
not” (PIV, p. 184). Furthermore, Meinong proposes that the
© 2008 Hogrefe & Huber Publishers
147
case of moral ought is distinguished from the nonmoral
case primarily in terms of the object of the “ought to”: One
morally ought to do what is morally good and to refrain
from doing what is morally bad – that is, what elicits the
approval or disapproval of the impartial observer.
Heider on Ought and Value
As mentioned, in Chapter 3 of PIR Heider proposes, like
Meinong, that values are properties of objects that are ap-
prehended through emotions (and desires). In Chapter 8 of
PIR, entitled “Ought and Value,” Heider further explicates
this concept. As the title suggests, Heider’s focus in this
chapter is on moral value and its relation to normative ob-
ligations (“oughts”). Heider’s resulting “explication of the
naive value concept” seems to incorporate aspects of both
Meinong’s early value theory (in PIV) and of his later, more
strongly “objectivist” view (e.g., Meinong, 1917; 1923).
Thus, Heider agrees with Meinong’s (1894) proposal that
values are dispositions of objects to elicit particular reac-
tions in us: “Both value and like belong to the dimension
of potentiality . . . under proper conditions, they may evoke
oughts or wishes” (PIR, p. 224). But at the same time, Hei-
der emphasizes the objectivity of value. For example, he
writes that the term “value” means “the property of an en-
tity . . . with the connotation of being objectively positive
in some way . . . any strictly impartial observer, particularly
one who is well informed and wise, would recognize it as
being positive” (PIR, pp. 223–224).
With respect to the concept of ought, Heider proposes,
also similar to Meinong, that “the content of ‘I (or o) ought
to do x’ may be said to be fashioned after the idea ‘some-
body wants or commands that I (or o) do x.’ In the case of
ought, however, it is not a particular somebody that is felt
to want or command people to do x, but some suprapersonal
objective order . . . oughts are impersonal. They refer to
standards . . . independent of the individual’s wishes.”
(PIR, p. 219).
In sum, Heider’s “explication of the common-sense con-
cepts of ought and value” agrees in its major outlines with
Meinong’s theory of moral value and moral obligation.
Discussion
Our comparative historical investigation both confirmed
and clarified Heider’s hint that “some of the ideas that I
developed about common-sense psychology originally
came from [Meinong]” (Heider in Harvey et al., 1976,
p. 6). Of course, PIR also takes up and integrates ideas from
other philosophers and psychologists, and in nearly every
case, Heider elaborates these ideas and combines them with
his own in creative ways. Still, the Meinongian memes in-
herent in PIR – Meinong’s theory of emotions, his theory
of value, and his theory of responsibility attribution – play
Social Psychology 2008; Vol. 39(3):141–150
 148 R. Reisenzein & I. Mchitarjan: Tracing Meinong’s Influence on Heider
an important role in Heider’s “scientific language for social
psychology.” Nor are these all correspondences between
PIR and PIV. For example, both Heider’s proposal that peo-
ple strive to attribute effects to stable dispositional causes
because such causes are best suited for predictions (e.g.,
PIR, p. 30), and the related concept of increasingly “deep-
er” levels of attribution (e.g., PIR, p. 81) can be traced back
to Meinong’s analysis of responsibility attribution. In this
context, interested readers may also wish to consult Mei-
nong’s (1919) elaborated theory of dispositions (see also
Mulligan, 2003). In addition, as mentioned, Heider more
or less continued Meinong’s method of psychological in-
quiry.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
Given these results, the complete lack of a reference to
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
Meinong in PIR certainly is surprising. Attribution theo-
rists have pointed out that surprising events instigate spon-
taneous causal search (Meyer, Reisenzein, & Schützwohl,
1997; Weiner, 1985): We want to know why the surprising
event – in our case, the lack of reference to a scientific
mentor – occurred. Although we do not have enough data
to provide a definitive answer to this question, we can offer
a number of (not necessarily exclusive) causal hypotheses.
First, it is possible that when Heider wrote PIR in the
1950s, he had forgotten the source of the Meinongian ideas
contained in his book; he recalled or rediscovered their
source only after PIR had been published (e.g., when doing
research for his 1970 article on the early history of Gestalt
psychology). This hypothesis receives support from Hei-
der’s statement in the interview with Harvey et al. (1976,
p. 6) that he “now realized” that some of the ideas in PIR
originally came from Meinong. It is even possible that Hei-
der had never read PIV before that time and only came into
contact with the material contained in it in Meinong’s lec-
tures6. Second, as proposed by Schönpflug (2008, this is-
sue), Heider may not have felt obliged to cite Meinong be-
cause, in the generation of scholars to which he belonged,
meticulous citation of the works of others, particularly
members of the own “school,” was deemed unnecessary.
As Schönpflug and Heidelberger (2007) have documented,
Heider’s friend and colleague Lewin was equally mute
about his early academic influences. And sure enough,
Meinong also borrowed from those before him, like Bren-
tano, Lotze, Adam Smith, Hume, Hutcheson, and Spinoza
(see Fabian & Simons, 1986; Findlay, 1963; Satris, 1982)
without always crediting them. Indeed, PIV contains hardly
any references at all (in the preface, Meinong attributes
their lack to time pressure). Third, Heider (1958) may have
been reluctant to cite Meinong because the latter had at the
time fallen into disrepute among analytical philosophers,
mainly due to criticisms of his theory of objects (e.g., Rus-
sell, 1904; Ryle, 1933, cited in Findlay, 1963) that Heider
may in fact have shared (Heider, 1983, p. 22). Meinong has
since been rehabilitated (e.g., Chrudzimski, 2007; Lambert,
6 Heider’s (1920) dissertation contains no reference to PIV (Meinong, 1894). However, it contains references to Meinong (1906a, 1917, 1919)
and to a psychology textbook written by Meinong’s student Witasek (1908). As mentioned, Heider later referred to PIV in his Notebooks
(Heider, 1988).
Social Psychology 2008; Vol. 39(3):141–150
1995), but back in 1958, the situation was certainly differ-
ent. Heider may have feared that the chances of getting his
book published in the behavioristic climate of the 1950s
would be further reduced if Meinong were prominently
featured there. Finally, Heider may have consciously or un-
consciously suppressed Meinong’s name in PIR to assert
his intellectual independence from Meinong’s “command-
ing presence.” Fabian and Simons (1986) propose a parallel
explanation for Meinong’s sparse reference to his teacher
Brentano.
Ultimately, however, this issue is of secondary impor-
tance. The main result of our study is that even without
Meinong’s name attached to them, Heider helped to trans-
port some of Meinong’s ideas into today’s social psychol-
ogy. Unknowingly, some of us have been Meinongians all
along.
Acknowledgments
We thank Uwe Laucken, Wulf-Uwe Meyer, Udo Rudolph,
and Wolfgang Schönpflug for their helpful comments on
an earlier version of the manuscript.
References
Brentano, F. (1874/1955). Psychologie vom empirischen Stand-
punkt [Psychology from the empirical point of view] (Vol. 1,
edited by O. Kraus). Hamburg: Meiner.
Chrudzimski, A. (2007). Gegenstandstheorie und Theorie der In-
tentionalität bei Alexius Meinong [Alexius Meinong’s theory
of objects and theory of intentionality]. Berlin: Springer-Ver-
lag.
Eaton, H.O. (1930). The Austrian philosophy of values. Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press.
Ehrenfels, C. (1897). System der Werttheorie [System of value
theory]. Leipzig: Reisland.
Fabian, R. & Simons, P.M. (1986). The second Austrian school of
value theory. In B. Smith & W. Grassl (Eds.), Austrian econom-
ics: Historical and philosophical background (pp. 37–101). New
York: New York University Press.
Fincham, F.D., & Jaspars, J.M. (1980). Attribution of responsi-
bility: From man the scientist to man as lawyer. In L. Berko-
witz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology
(Vol. 13, pp. 81–138). New York: Academic Press.
Findlay, J.N. (1963). Meinong’s theory of objects and values (2nd
ed.). Oxford: Clarendon.
Garrett, H.E. (1939). Lewin’s topological psychology: An evalu-
ation. Psychological Review, 46, 517–524.
Harvey, J.H., Ickes, W.J., & Kidd, R.F. (Eds.). (1976). New direc-
tions in attribution research (Vol. 1). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Heider, F. (1920). Zur Subjektivität der Sinnesqualitäten [On the
© 2008 Hogrefe & Huber Publishers
 R. Reisenzein & I. Mchitarjan: Tracing Meinong’s Influence on Heider
subjectivity of sense qualities]. Unpublished dissertation, Uni-
versity of Graz.
Heider, F. (1926). Ding und Medium [Thing and medium]. Sym-
posion, 1, 109–157. Reprint 2005, Berlin: Kadmos Verlag.
Heider, F. (1944). Social perception and phenomenal causality.
Psychological Review, 51, 358–374.
Heider, F. (1946). Attitudes and cognitive organization. The Jour-
nal of Psychology, 21, 107–112.
Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. New
York: Wiley.
Heider, F. (1970). Gestalt theory: Early history and reminiscences.
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 6, 131–139.
Heider, F. (1983). The life of a psychologist: An autobiography.
Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas.
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.
Heider, F. (Ed. Marijana Benesh-Weiner). (1987–1989). “The
notebooks,” Vols. 1–6. München: PVU.
Heider, F. (Ed. Marijana Benesh-Weiner). (1988). “The note-
books,” Vol. 5: Attributional and interpersonal evaluation.
München: PVU.
Heider, F., & Simmel, M. (1944). An experimental study of apparent
behavior. American Journal of Psychology, 57, 234–259.
Höfler, A. (1897). Psychologie [Psychology]. Wien: Tempsky.
Kindinger, R. (1968). Vorwort [Preface]. In R. Haller & R. Kin-
dinger (Eds.), Alexius Meinong Gesamtausgabe [Alexius Me-
inong’s complete works] (Vol. III, pp. VII–XIII). Graz, Aus-
tria: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt.
Lambert, K. (1995). Substitution and the expansion of the world.
Grazer Philosophische Studien, 49, 129–143.
Laucken, U. (1999). “An exceptionally important publication”:
Fritz Heider (1896–1988). Berichte aus dem Institut zur Erfor-
schung von Mensch-Umwelt-Beziehungen, 31, Universität
Oldenburg. [A shortened version of this essay is published as:
Laucken, U. (2000). Fritz Heider: The psychology of interper-
sonal relations (1958). In H.E. Lück, R. Miller & G. Sewz-
Vosshenrich (Hrsg.) Klassiker der Psychologie [Classics of
psychology] (pp. 203–208). Stuttgart/Berlin/Köln: Kohlham-
mer]
Lewin, K. (1936). Principles of topological psychology. New
York: McGraw-Hill.
Mackenzie, J.S. (1895). Notes on the theory of value. Mind, 4,
425–449.
McGraw, K.M. (1987). Guilt following transgression: An attribu-
tion of responsibility approach. Journal of Personality and So-
cial Psychology, 53, 247–256.
Meinong, A. (1894). Psychologisch-ethische Untersuchungen zur
Werth-Theorie [Psychological-ethical investigations in value the-
ory]. Graz, Austria: Leuschner & Lubensky. Reprinted in R. Hal-
ler & R. Kindinger (Eds.). (1968). Alexius Meinong Gesamtaus-
gabe[Alexius Meinong’s complete works] (Vol. III, pp. 3–244).
Graz, Austria: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt.
Meinong, A. (1906a). Über die Erfahrungsgrundlagen unseres
Wissens [On the empirical basis of our knowledge]. Berlin:
Springer-Verlag. [Reprinted in R. Haller & R. Kindinger
(Eds.). (1973). Alexius Meinong Gesamtausgabe [Alexius Me-
inong’s complete works] (Vol. V, pp. 369–481). Graz, Austria:
Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt.]
Meinong, A. (1906b). Über Urteilsgefühle: Was sie sind und was sie
nicht sind [On judgment-based feelings: What they are and what
they are not]. Archiv für die gesamte Psychologie, 6, 22–58.
Meinong, A. (1910). Über Annahmen [On assumptions] (2nd ed.).
Leipzig, Austria: Barth. Reprinted in R. Haller & R. Kindinger
© 2008 Hogrefe & Huber Publishers
149
(Eds.). (1977). Alexius Meinong Gesamtausgabe [Alexius Me-
inong’s complete works] (Vol. IV). Graz, Austria: Akademi-
sche Druck- und Verlagsanstalt.
Meinong, A. (1912). Für die Psychologie und gegen den Psycho-
logismus in der allgemeinen Werttheorie [For psychology and
against psychologism in the general theory of value]. Logos,
3, 1–14.
Meinong, A. (1917). Über emotionale Präsentation [On emotional
presentation]. Sitzungsberichte der Kaiserlichen Akademie der
Wissenschaften in Wien, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse,
183, 2–181. [Reprinted in R. Haller & R. Kindinger (Eds.).
(1968). Alexius Meinong Gesamtausgabe [Alexius Meinong’s
complete works] (Vol. III, pp. 285–465). Graz, Austria: Aka-
demische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt]
Meinong, A. (1919). Allgemeines zur Lehre von den Dispositio-
nen [On the general theory of dispositions]. In A. Martinak
(Ed.), Beiträge zur Pädagogik und Dispositionstheorie.
Eduard Martinak zur Feier seines 60. Geburtstages [Contri-
butions to the theory of dispositions] (pp. 33–54). Prag: Haase.
Meinong, A. (1923). Zur Grundlegung der allgemeinen Werttheorie
[On the foundations of general value theory]. Graz, Austria:
Leuschner and Lubensky. [Reprinted in R. Haller & R. Kindinger
(Hg.) (1968), Alexius Meinong Gesamtausgabe Band III [Al-
exius Meinong’s complete works] (Vol. III, pp. 471–656). Graz,
Austria: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt]
Meyer, W.-U., Reisenzein, R., & Schützwohl, A. (1997). Toward
a process analysis of emotions: The case of surprise. Motiva-
tion and Emotion, 21, 251–274.
Mulligan, K. (2003). Dispositions, their bases and correlates: Mei-
nong’s analysis. In K. Kijania-Placek (Ed.), Philosophy and log-
ic: In search of the Polish tradition. Essays in honour of Jan
Wolenski on the occasion of his 60th birthday (pp. 193–211).
Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Perry, W. (1926). General theory of value. New York: Longmans,
Green.
Piaget, J. (1932). The moral judgment of the child. New York:
Harcourt Brace.
Reicher, M.E. (2005). Wertgefühle [Value feelings]. In A. Früh-
wirth, M.E. Reicher, & P. Wilhelmer (Eds.), Markt-Wert-Ge-
fühle: Positionen und Perspektiven einer multidisziplinären
Wertdebatte [Market-value emotions: Positions and perspec-
tives of a multidisciplinary value debate]. Vienna: Passagen.
Reisenzein, R., Meyer, W.-U., & Schützwohl, A. (2003). Einfüh-
rung in die Emotionspsychologie, Band III: Kognitive Emo-
tionstheorien [Introduction to the psychology of emotion,
Vol. 3: Cognitive theories of emotion]. Bern: Huber.
Reisenzein, R., & Rudolph, U. (2008). The discovery of common-
sense psychology. Social Psychology, 39, 125–133.
Russell, B. (1904). Meinong’s theory of complexes and assump-
tions. Mind, 13, 204–219 (Part 1); 336–354 (Part 2); 509–524
(Part 3).
Satris, S. (1982). The theory of value and the rise of ethical emo-
tivism. Journal of the History of Ideas, 43, 109–128.
Schönpflug, W. (2008). Fritz Heider – My academic teacher and
his academic teachers: Heider’s “Seminar in Interpersonal Re-
lations” and comments on his European background. Social
Psychology, 39, 134–140.
Schönpflug, W., & Heidelberger, M. (2007). Kurt Lewin und
seine Lehrer Alois Riehl und Ernst Cassirer: Wissenschaft-
liche Philosophie, Erkenntnistheorie und Feldtheorie [Kurt
Lewin and his teachers Alois Riehl and Ernst Cassirer]. In
Social Psychology 2008; Vol. 39(3):141–150
 150 R. Reisenzein & I. Mchitarjan: Tracing Meinong’s Influence on Heider

W. Schönpflug (Ed.), Kurt Lewin – Person und Werk, Um- Düwell, C. Hübenthal, & M.H. Werner (Eds.), Handbuch Ethik
feld und Rezeption [Kurt Lewin – Person and work, context, [Handbook of ethics] (pp. 521–527). Stuttgart: Metzler.
and reception]. Frankfurt am Main: Lang. Witasek, S. (1908). Grundlinien der Psychologie [Outline of psy-
Shaw, M.E., & Sulzer, J.L. (1964). An empirical test of Heider’s chology]. Leipzig: Felix Meiner.
levels in attribution of responsibility. Journal of Abnormal and
Social Psychology, 69, 39–46.
Smith, M. (1989). Dispositional theories of value. Proceedings of
the Aristotelian Society, 63, 89–111. Rainer Reisenzein
Urban, W.M. (1909). Valuation: Its nature and laws. London: Al-
len & Unwin. University of Greifswald
Weiner, B. (1985). “Spontaneous” causal thinking. Psychological Institute of Psychology
Bulletin, 97, 74–84. Franz-Mehring-Straße 47
Weiner, B. (1995). Judgments of responsibility: A foundation for D-17489 Greifswald
a theory of social conduct. New York: Guilford. Germany
This article is intended solely for the personal use of the individual user and is not to be disseminated broadly.

Weiner, B. (2006). Social motivation, justice, and the moral emo- Tel. +49 3834 863770
This document is copyrighted by the American Psychological Association or one of its allied publishers.

tions: An attributional approach. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Fax +49 3834 863763
Werner, M.H. (2002). Verantwortung [Responsibility]. In M. E-mail rainer.reisenzein@uni-greifswald.de

Social Psychology 2008; Vol. 39(3):141–150 © 2008 Hogrefe & Huber Publishers