Department of Psychology and Center for Translational Neuroscience, University of Oregon.
Perspect Psychol Sci. 2021 Jul;16(4):864-874. doi: 10.1177/1745691620969650. Epub 2021 Jan 7.
Practicality was a valued attribute of academic psychological theory during its initial decades, but usefulness has since faded in importance to the field. Theories are now evaluated mainly on their ability to account for decontextualized laboratory data and not their ability to help solve societal problems. With laudable exceptions in the clinical, intergroup, and health domains, most psychological theories have little relevance to people's everyday lives, poor accessibility to policymakers, or even applicability to the work of other academics who are better positioned to translate the theories to the practical realm. We refer to the lack of relevance, accessibility, and applicability of psychological theory to the rest of society as the practicality crisis. The practicality crisis harms the field in its ability to attract the next generation of scholars and maintain viability at the national level. We describe practical theory and illustrate its use in the field of self-regulation. Psychological theory is historically and scientifically well positioned to become useful should scholars in the field decide to value practicality. We offer a set of incentives to encourage the return of social psychology to the Lewinian vision of a useful science that speaks to pressing social issues.
实用性是学术心理学理论最初几十年的一个有价值的属性，但此后其重要性在该领域逐渐下降。现在，理论主要根据其解释非情境化实验室数据的能力来评估，而不是根据其解决社会问题的能力。除了临床、群体间和健康领域的一些值得称赞的例外，大多数心理学理论与人们的日常生活、政策制定者的可及性或甚至与其他更有能力将理论转化为实践领域的学者的适用性都几乎没有关系。我们将心理学理论与社会其他领域的相关性、可及性和适用性的缺乏称为实用性危机。实用性危机损害了该领域吸引下一代学者的能力，并使其在国家层面上难以维持生存。我们描述了实用理论，并举例说明了它在自我调节领域的应用。如果该领域的学者重视实用性，心理学理论在历史和科学上都有很好的定位，可以变得有用。我们提供了一系列激励措施，鼓励社会心理学回归到对具有社会重要性的紧迫问题有意义的有用科学的勒温愿景。
