“[…] if I wish to be understood by others, and if I wish to enlist others for my purposes, then I must present myself in a way that conforms to folk-psychological platitudes, or laws. To explain my actions – even my most outrageous ones – to others is to find an appropriate set of folk-psychological platitudes in the light of which I am understandable and predictable. […] Given the fundamental role of folk psychology, it should not come as a surprise that it is also the intuition most strongly protected by sanctions. Inability to come up with acceptable folk-psychological accounts of ourselves and others is sanctioned by disapproval, lack of acceptance, or even referral to psychiatric services. No wonder, therefore, that social psychologists find their subjects ‘telling more than they know’: rather than admit that they have no introspective access to many of their higher cognitive processes, subjects will tell folk-psychological stories of how their mind allegedly works.”
– Martin Kusch (1999, p. 239), Psychological knowledge: A social history and philosophy. Routledge.