“…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.…”