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So Useful as a Good Theory? The Practicality Crisis in (Social) Psychological Theory.

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.

SUBMITTER: Berkman ET

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8260606 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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So Useful as a Good Theory? The Practicality Crisis in (Social) Psychological Theory.

Berkman Elliot T ET Wilson Sylas M SM

Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science 20210107 4

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 ...[more]

PMID: 33412079

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Project description:BackgroundFamily impoverished undergraduates are more likely to be vulnerable to psychological crises. Therefore, this study aimed to elucidate the intrinsic relationship between social support, psychological resilience, and psychological crisis vulnerability among family impoverished undergraduates and to provide valuable practical evidence and policy support for effectively improving the mental health of family impoverished undergraduates.MethodsThis study applied quantitative methods to explore the impact of social support on psychological crisis vulnerability among family impoverished undergraduates while also examining the mediating effect of psychological resilience in this process. First, we used the Psychological Crisis Vulnerability Measurement Questionnaire to assess the psychological crisis vulnerability among family impoverished undergraduates and compared it under different demographic characteristics. Second, we expanded the independent variables that affect psychological crisis vulnerability among family impoverished undergraduates and conducted multiple linear regression analyses. Finally, we employed a structural equation modeling approach to analyze the underlying mechanisms between social support and psychological crisis vulnerability and to test the conspicuousness of the mediating role of psychological resilience in the process by which social support affects psychological crisis vulnerability.ResultsAnalysis of 1,549 valid questionnaires revealed that the overall level of psychological crisis vulnerability among family impoverished undergraduates was moderate. Among the surveyed family impoverished undergraduates, 37.62% reported difficulty in maintaining psychological balance when facing crises, and 4.73% showed a very vulnerable response to crises. Factors significantly associated with the psychological crisis vulnerability of family impoverished undergraduates included being a student from a financially disadvantaged background, coming from a single-parent family, and having experienced being a left-behind child. Additionally, the participants had a social support score of 60.29 ± 11.31, indicating that individual social support was significantly correlated with family support, friend support, and support from significant others. This study confirms that social support can indirectly predict psychological crisis vulnerability of family impoverished undergraduates through psychological resilience.ConclusionFamily impoverished undergraduates are more prone to psychological crises, and effective social support can help transform them into motivational forces for their own development. This, in turn, can improve their psychological state when facing problems, and enhance their ability to solve them. Furthermore, social support influences the psychological crisis vulnerability of family impoverished undergraduates through psychological resilience. Therefore, we suggest that universities pay attention to the developmental needs of students' subjectivity, strengthen their psychological and behavioral training, further improve psychological counseling stations, and provide group counseling to students, as appropriate. Simultaneously, attention should also be paid to students' family issues, helping create a positive family environment for students and strengthening home-university cooperation to effectively intervene in undergraduates' psychological crises.

Project description:BackgroundPhysical activity (PA) in older adults is influenced by a range of environmental, demographic, health-related, social, and psychological variables. Social cognitive psychological models assume that all influences on behaviour operate indirectly through the models constructs, i.e., via intention and self-efficacy. We evaluated direct, indirect, and moderating relationships of a broad range of external variables with physical activity levels alongside intention and self-efficacy.MethodsWe performed a cross-sectional survey of a representative and stratified (65-80 and 80+ years; deprived and affluent) sample of 584 community-dwelling people, resident in Scotland. Objectively measured physical activity and questionnaire data were collected.ResultsSelf-efficacy showed unique relationships with physical activity, controlling for demographic, mental health, social, environmental, and weather variables separately, but the relationship was not significant when controlling for physical health. Overall, results indicating support for a mediation hypothesis, intention and self-efficacy statistically mediate the relationship of most domain variables with physical activity. Moderation analyses show that the relationship between social cognitions and physical activity was stronger for individuals with better physical health and lower levels of socio-economic deprivation.ConclusionsSocial cognitive variables reflect a range of known environmental, demographic, health-related and social correlates of physical activity, they mediate the relationships of those correlates with physical activity and account for additional variance in physical activity when external correlates are controlled for, except for the physical health domain. The finding that the social cognition-physical activity relationship is higher for participants with better health and higher levels of affluence raises issues for the applicability of social cognitive models to the most disadvantaged older people.

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So Useful as a Good Theory? The Practicality Crisis in (Social) Psychological Theory.

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So Useful as a Good Theory? The Practicality Crisis in (Social) Psychological Theory.

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