On the Overuse and Misuse of Mediation Analysis: It May Be a Matter of Timing

Interparental conflict, parental intrusiveness, and interpersonal functioning in emerging adulthood

“…Because mental health issues are often passed genetically from parents to children, it is possible that parents are more likely to experience conflict due to underlying depressive issues, these same predispositions that they pass on to children. Additional understanding on the temporal order effects of these variables would be extremely helpful and would strengthen the claims that we have made in this article as we recognize the limitations of a mediational model within the context of a cross-sectional study (Kline, 2015;Tate, 2015;Trafimow, 2015). However, although our mediational model suggests the beginning of a significant link among these variables, longitudinal research should be conducted further in order to determine the full extent to which IPC and parental behaviors lead to difficulties with depression symptomatology and loneliness in emerging adulthood.…”

Individual self > relational self > collective self—But why? Processes driving the self‐hierarchy in self‐ and person perception

“…First, we adopted a within‐person mediation approach (Grice, Cohn, Ramsey, & Chiney, ). Second, we made theory‐driven assumptions about the underlying causality (Kline, ) and time order (Tate, ; ontogenesis of the three selves → content/teleological value of selves → self‐preference). Still, the results provide only correlational support for these processes.…”

Whose Side Are You On? Exploring the Role of Perspective Taking on Third-Party’s Reactions to Workplace Deviance

“…None the less, in both studies we manipulated the predictor (perspective taking), but we only measured the mediator; as such, conclusions about its causal role in predicting the outcome cannot be drawn. Indeed in social and applied psychology there is an ongoing discussion on the perils of conducting mediational analyses (e.g., Grice, Cohn, Ramsey, & Chaney 2015;Kline, 2015;MacKinnon & Pirlott, 2015;Tate, 2015;Thoemmes, 2015;Trafimow, 2015): Causal inferences regarding the role of the independent variable in causing the mediator, which then is assumed to cause the dependent variable, are often unwarranted due to assumptions that are rarely met in typical correlational designs, such as the directionality of the cause-effect relationship (Kline, 2015;Trafimow, 2016) or to the absence of temporal precedence (Tate, 2015). We therefore conducted two additional studies to address the causal role of the mediators-external attributions and moral violations-as the variables through which perspective taking may exert its effect.…”

“…To this purpose, the scenario employed in Study 2 was modified to reflect the manipulation of the mediators in Studies 3a and 3b. In setting up the manipulation of both the predictor and the mediator, special care was given to ensure a time-ordered sequence of the predictor preceding the mediator and the outcome variable (Tate, 2015).…”