Construals

In social psychology, construals are how individuals perceive, comprehend, and interpret the world around them, particularly the behavior or action of others towards themselves. Researchers and theorists within virtually every sub-discipline of psychology have acknowledged the relevance of a subjective construal, especially with regards to the concepts of the false consensus effect and the fundamental attribution error. There is a difference between self-construal and construal in a social atmosphere. While self-construal is a perception of the self, the latter is a perception of one's surroundings. Construal plays a crucial role in situations "whenever people are obliged to venture beyond the information immediately provided by the direct observation or secondhand report of a stimulus event, in particular whenever they are obliged to infer additional details of content, context, or meaning in the actions and outcomes that unfold around them." In other words, a person is most likely to use construal when he or she lacks the knowledge to correctly deal with a given situation.