Drawing on the philosophy of psychological explanation, we suggest that psychological science, by focusing on effects, may lose sight of its primary explananda: psychological capacities. We revisit Marr’s levels-of-analysis framework, which has been remarkably productive and useful for cognitive psychological explanation. We discuss ways in which Marr’s framework may be extended to other areas of psychology, such as social, developmental, and evolutionary psychology, bringing new benefits to these fields. We then show how theoretical analyses can endow a theory with minimal plausibility even before contact with empirical data: We call this the theoretical cycle. Finally, we explain how our proposal may contribute to addressing critical issues in psychological science, including how to leverage effects to understand capacities better.

借鉴心理学解释的哲学，我们认为，心理科学由于关注效果，可能会忽视它的主要解释：心理能力。我们重新审视马尔的分析层次框架，该框架对于认知心理学解释非常富有成效和有用。我们讨论如何将马尔的框架扩展到心理学的其他领域，例如社会心理学、发展心理学和进化心理学，为这些领域带来新的好处。然后，我们展示理论分析如何在接触经验数据之前赋予理论最小的可信度：我们称之为理论循环。最后，我们解释了我们的建议如何有助于解决心理科学中的关键问题，包括如何利用效应来更好地理解能力。