Do public perceptions of social psychological research align with this field's ostensible goal of describing and explaining real-world social behavior? There has been mounting concern about a disconnect between social psychological research and reality, which in turn raises concerns about social psychology's public image. But do non-experts agree with social psychologists that this field in its current state has little to say about real-world behavior? In a preregistered study (N = 335), we assessed perceptions of recent (2018–2019) social psychological research published in the field's “top” journals along three dimensions: perceived verisimilitude (i.e., whether study procedures are representative of everyday life), perceived veridicality (i.e., whether findings seem likely to generalize to real-world settings), and perceived consequentiality (i.e., whether research questions and findings are relevant to everyday life and important social issues). In contrast to social psychologists themselves, an online sample of non-experts expressed relatively favorable perceptions of social psychological research along all three dimensions. Additionally, perceptions of realism (i.e., verisimilitude and veridicality) and consequentiality were positively correlated at the article level and participants' attitudes toward psychology predicted these perceptions. Our findings suggest that despite widespread unease about social psychology's real-world relevance among social psychologists, members of the public do not appear to share this view, a finding that may help alleviate concerns about the field's ability to continue to attract funding, new talent, and interdisciplinary collaboration.

公众对社会心理学研究的看法是否与该领域描述和解释现实世界社会行为的表面目标一致？人们越来越担心社会心理学研究与现实之间的脱节，这反过来又引发了对社会心理学公众形象的担忧。但是，非专家是否同意社会心理学家的观点，即这个领域在目前的状态下对现实世界的行为几乎没有什么可说的？在一项预先注册的研究 ( N  = 335) 中，我们从三个维度评估了对该领域“顶级”期刊发表的近期 (2018-2019) 社会心理学研究的看法：感知的真实性（即，研究程序是否代表日常生活），感知真实性（即，发现是否有可能推广到现实世界中），以及感知的后果（即，研究问题和发现是否与日常生活和重要的社会问题相关）。与社会心理学家本身相反，非专家的在线样本在所有三个维度上都表达了对社会心理学研究的相对有利的看法。此外，对现实主义的看法（即真实性和真实性）和结果性在文章层面呈正相关，参与者对心理学的态度预测了这些看法。我们的研究结果表明，尽管社会心理学家普遍对社会心理学与现实世界的相关性感到不安，但公众似乎并不认同这种观点，这一发现可能有助于缓解对该领域继续吸引资金、新人才、和跨学科合作。