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My purpose in this paper is to highlight some of the central ideas contained in Heider's theory, to present them in a systematic way, and to show their relevance to developments in several central fields of contemporary social psychology.

— Harold Kelley

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More quotes by Harold Kelley

Solutions require thinking through a series of interrelated steps or stages, analyzing a number of rules at each point, and always keeping in mind conclusions reached at earlier points.

SALIENCE The notion here is that an effect is attributed to the cause that is most salient in the perceptual field at the time the effect is observed.

PRIMACY The general notion here is that a person scans and interprets a sequence of information until he attains an attribution from it and then disregards later information or assimilates it to his earlier impression.

Attributional research shows that attributions affect our feelings about past events and our expectations about future ones, our attitudes toward other persons and our reactions to their behavior, and our conceptions of ourselves and our efforts to improve our fortunes.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Harold Kelley (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.