ArticlePerspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science2021
So Useful as a Good Theory? The Practicality Crisis in (Social) Psychological Theory.
Article in Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed.
- A golden age of behavioural social psychology? Towards a social psychology of power and intergroup relations in the digital age.The British journal of social psychology · 2025Article
- Capturing causal claims: A fine-tuned text mining model for extracting causal sentences from social science papers.Research synthesis methods · 2025Article
- Concerns About Theorizing, Relevance, Generalizability, and Methodology Across Two Crises in Social Psychology.International review of social psychology · 2025Article
- Addressing climate change with behavioral science: A global intervention tournament in 63 countries.Science advances · 2024Article
- Challenging the N-Heuristic: Effect size, not sample size, predicts the replicability of psychological science.PloS one · 2024Article
- Use of Assistive Technologies and Alternative Means by Older People: The "Actional Model of Older People´s Coping with Health-Related Declines".Integrative psychological & behavioral science · 2023Article
- The Importance of Measuring Mental Wellbeing in the Context of Psychological Distress: Using a Theoretical Framework to Test the Dual-Continua Model of Mental Health.Behavioral sciences (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Article
- A manifesto for applying behavioural science.Nature human behaviour · 2023Review
- Suicide capability within the ideation-to-action framework: A systematic scoping review.PloS one · 2022Article
- Advances on Self-Regulation Models: A New Research Agenda Through the SR vs ER Behavior Theory in Different Psychology Contexts.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Review
- Article
- Are we speaking the same language? Call for action to improve theory application and reporting in behaviour change research.BMC public health · 2021Article
- Systematic vs. Narrative Reviews in Sport and Exercise Psychology: Is Either Approach Superior to the Other?Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
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Abstract
Practicality was a valued attribute of academic psychological theory during its initial decades, but usefulness has since faded in importance to the field. Theories are now evaluated mainly on their ability to account for decontextualized laboratory data and not their ability to help solve societal problems. With laudable exceptions in the clinical, intergroup, and health domains, most psychological theories have little relevance to people's everyday lives, poor accessibility to policymakers, or even applicability to the work of other academics who are better positioned to translate the theories to the practical realm. We refer to the lack of relevance, accessibility, and applicability of psychological theory to the rest of society as the practicality crisis. The practicality crisis harms the field in its ability to attract the next generation of scholars and maintain viability at the national level. We describe practical theory and illustrate its use in the field of self-regulation. Psychological theory is historically and scientifically well positioned to become useful should scholars in the field decide to value practicality. We offer a set of incentives to encourage the return of social psychology to the Lewinian vision of a useful science that speaks to pressing social issues.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.