HEIDER’S BALANCE THEORY

HEIDER’S BALANCE THEORY

Most writers usually credit Fritz Heider (1946) with the earliest articulation of a consistency theory. As a psychologist, Heider was concerned with the way an individual organizes attitudes toward people and objects in relation to one another within that individual's own cognitive structure. Heider postulated that unbalanced states produce tension and generate forces to restore balance. He says that "the concept of a balanced state designates a situation in which the perceived units and the experienced sentiments co-exist without stress".

Heider's paradigm focused on two individuals, a person (P), the object of the analysis, some other person (O), and a physical object, idea, or event (X). Heider's concern was with how relationships among these three entities are organized in the mind of one individual (P). Heider distinguished two types of relationships among these three entities, liking (L) and unit (U) relations (cause, possession, similarity, etc.). In Heider's paradigm, "a balanced state exists if all three relations are positive in all respects or if two are negative and one is positive”. All other combinations are unbalanced.

In Heider's conception, degrees of liking cannot be represented; a relation is either positive or negative (Figure). It is assumed that a balanced state is stable and resists outside-influences. An unbalanced state is assumed to be unstable and is assumed to produce psychological tension within an individual. This tension "becomes relieved only when change within the situation takes place in such a way that a state of balance is achieved" (Heider, 1958). This pinpoints the communicator's interest in the theory for it implies a model of attitude change and resistance to attitude change. Unbalanced states, being unstable states, are susceptible to change toward balance. Balanced states, being stable states, resist change.