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.
Read more about Construals: Major Theoretical Approaches, Major Empirical Evidence, Construal and "the Self", Construal and Mammography, Self-construal and The Classroom, Future Directions