Standard definitions of social psychology, such as “the study of the way in which people’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are influenced by the real or imagined presence of other people” (Aronson et al., 2019, p. 3), fail to capture much of what social psychologists actually do and do not capture the basic theoretical foundations of the field. I suggest the field is founded on the construal principle, which holds that to understand and predict human behavior, one must focus on people’s proximate (current) construals of themselves and their environment. The construal principle empowers social psychology in three key ways: It (a) accounts for the power of the situation, by acknowledging that construals are highly attuned to social norms; (b) is amenable to study with the experimental method; and (c) provides a unique theoretical framework for how to change human behavior. I discuss the origins and implications of the construal principle and how it distinguishes social psychology from related subdisciplines, including evolutionary social psychology, personality psychology, and social neuroscience. Whereas each subdiscipline is good at accomplishing the tasks it has set for itself, social psychology has unique advantages.

中文翻译：

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什么是社会心理学？解释原则。

社会心理学的标准定义，例如“研究人们的思想、感受和行为如何受到其他人的真实或想象存在的影响”（Aronson 等人，2019 年，第 3 页），捕捉到了社会心理学家实际所做的大部分事情，而没有捕捉到该领域的基本理论基础。我建议该领域建立在解释原则之上，它认为要理解和预测人类行为，必须关注人们对自己及其环境的近似（当前）解释。解释原则以三个关键方式赋予社会心理学权力：它（a）通过承认解释与社会规范高度协调来解释情况的力量；(b) 可以通过实验方法进行研究；(c) 为如何改变人类行为提供了一个独特的理论框架。我讨论了解释原理的起源和含义，以及它如何将社会心理学与相关的子学科区分开来，包括进化社会心理学、人格心理学和社会神经科学。尽管每个分支学科都擅长完成为自己设定的任务，但社会心理学却具有独特的优势。