Spurious correlations in research on ability tilt

Unmasking artifactual links: A reanalysis reveals No direct causal relationship between self-esteem and quality of social relations

A meta-analysis conducted by Harris and Orth (2020) found positive prospective cross-lagged effects between quality of social relations and self-esteem in included longitudinal studies. Harris and Orth concluded that the link between self-esteem and quality of social relations is reciprocal and characterized by a positive feedback loop. However, meta-analytic effects were estimated while controlling for a prior measurement of the outcome and such effects are known to be susceptible to artifactual (i.e. spurious) effects due to correlations with measurement errors and reversion to mediocrity. We reanalyzed the same data and found paradoxical effects indicating, simultaneously, both increasing and decreasing effects between self-esteem and social relations. These findings suggest that prospective effects between self-esteem and quality of social relations are artifactual rather than due to a true reciprocal effect. Thus, these findings have important theoretical implications and challenge both the risk regulation model, which posits that self-esteem has a causal effect on quality of social relations, and the sociometer theory, which claims that quality of relations is the cause and self-esteem the effect. The present results prompt further investigation into the underlying mechanisms driving these artifactual associations. Additionally, the study highlights the importance of considering methodological limitations in future meta-analyses to improve the accuracy of causal inferences.

Exploring the Relationship between Cognitive Ability Tilt and Job Performance

Most of the work examining the relationship between intelligence and job performance has conceptualized intelligence as g. Recent findings, however, have supported the claim that more specific factors of intelligence contribute to the prediction of job performance. The present study builds upon prior work on specific cognitive abilities by investigating the relationship between ability tilt, a measure representing differential strength between two specific abilities, and job performance. It was hypothesized that ability tilt would differentially relate to job performance based on whether or not the tilt matched the ability requirements of the job, and that ability tilt would provide incremental validity over g and specific abilities for predicting performance when the tilt matched job requirements. Hypotheses were tested using a large sample from the General Aptitude Test Battery (GATB) database. Ability tilt related with job performance in the expected direction for 27 of the 36 tilt-job combinations examined, with a mean effect size of .04 when the tilt matched job requirements. The mean incremental validities for ability tilt were .007 over g and .003 over g and specific abilities, and, on average, tilt explained 7.1% of the total variance in job performance. The results provide limited evidence that ability tilt may be a useful predictor in addition to ability level, and contribute to our understanding of the role of specific abilities in the workplace.