We begin Chapter 12, Explanations in Psychology, with a description of psychological phenomena and the temptations to think of them as “things.” We then discuss whether psychological categories should be seen as natural or human-made. Then we look at psychological explanations of people’s behavior and experiences and describe contextualized explanations focusing on reasons and interpretations, causal explanations, and abduction, sometimes called inference to the best explanation. We describe and discuss the most important features of these explanatory strategies. We look at some of the limitations of causal explanations built on reductionist assumptions, and the seemingly almost inevitable consequence of assuming determinism when using such explanations. We also discuss explanatory strategies that tempt psychologists to reify psychological phenomena such as behaviors or experiences. This means imagining that such phenomena are “entities” inside people’s minds or brains, even though one only has access to the observed behaviors or recounted experiences.