Individual skill

spq-theory-building

Use when building the theoretical argument of a Social Psychology Quarterly (SPQ) manuscript into a contribution to sociological social psychology — whether the work is in the symbolic-interaction, social-structure-and-personality, group-processes, identity, or affect tradition. SPQ rewards an explicit social-psychological mechanism linking structure to the individual, not a bare finding. Structures the argument; it does not run analyses.

Social-Psychology-Quarterly-Skills/skills/spq-theory-building/SKILL.md

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# Theory & Argument Building (spq-theory-building)

At SPQ a result is not a contribution until it is attached to a **social-psychological mechanism** that
connects social structure or process to the individual — the self, identity, emotion, cognition, or
interaction. This skill turns findings into theory in the idiom of your tradition: explicit mechanisms,
scope conditions, and observable implications.

## When to trigger

- The empirics are strong but the "so what / why" is thin or purely descriptive
- A reviewer said the paper is "atheoretical," "ad hoc," or "not really social-psychological"
- You need to state the mechanism linking structure and the individual explicitly
- You are formalizing within a program (expectation states, affect control, identity verification)
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