Although the lack of conceptual clarity has been observed to be a widespread and fundamental problem in psychology, conceptual clarification plays a mostly marginal role in psychological research. In this article, we argue that better conceptualization of psychological phenomena is needed to move psychology forward as a science. We first show how conceptual unclarity seeps through all aspects of psychological research, from everyday concepts to statistical measures. We then turn to recommendations on how to improve conceptual clarity in psychology, emphasizing the importance of seeing research as an iterative process in which it is necessary to revisit the phenomena that are the foundations of theories and models, as well as how they are conceptualized and measured.

尽管已经观察到缺乏概念清晰性是心理学中普遍存在的基本问题，但概念清晰性在心理学研究中扮演的角色大多是边缘性的。在本文中，我们认为需要对心理现象进行更好的概念化，以推动心理学作为一门科学向前发展。我们首先展示了概念的模糊性如何渗透到心理学研究的各个方面，从日常概念到统计测量。然后我们转向关于如何提高心理学概念清晰度的建议，强调将研究视为一个迭代过程的重要性，在这个过程中，有必要重新审视作为理论和模型基础的现象，以及它们是如何被概念化和测量。