Consent is central to many of today’s most pressing social issues: What counts as sexual assault? Whom are the police allowed to search? Can they use people’s data like that? Yet despite the fact that consent is in many ways an inherently psychological phenomenon, it has not been a core topic of study in psychology. Although domain-specific research on consent—most commonly, informed consent and sexual consent—is regularly published in specialty journals (e.g., methods and sex-research journals), consent has been largely ignored as a generalizable psychological phenomenon. This has meant that consent has been mostly excluded from “mainstream” psychology as a core topic of study. This omission is particularly striking given that psychologists have paid broad attention to related constructs, such as compliance, obedience, persuasion, free will, and autonomy, and that scholars in other fields, such as law and philosophy, have paid considerably more attention to the topic of consent, despite its uniquely psychological qualities. In this article, I argue that psychologists should embrace consent—in particular, the subjective experience of consent—as a core topic of study.

同意是当今许多最紧迫的社会问题的核心：什么是性侵犯？警方允许搜查哪些人？他们可以这样使用人们的数据吗？然而，尽管同意在许多方面是一种内在的心理现象，但它并不是心理学研究的核心课题。尽管关于同意的特定领域研究——最常见的是知情同意和性同意——定期发表在专业期刊（例如方法和性研究期刊）上，但同意作为一种普遍的心理现象在很大程度上被忽视了。这意味着同意已被排除在“主流”心理学作为核心研究课题之外。鉴于心理学家已经广泛关注相关结构，例如顺从、服从、说服、自由意志、和自主权，以及其他领域的学者，如法律和哲学，尽管同意这个话题具有独特的心理特质，但对它的关注度要高得多。在这篇文章中，我认为心理学家应该接受同意——尤其是，同意的主观体验——作为一个核心研究课题。