Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Research on interpersonal expectations
- Part II Research on the mediation of interpersonal expectations through nonverbal behavior
- Part III The study of interpersonal expectations
- 17 The methodological imagination: Insoluble problems or investigable questions?
- 18 Issues in studying the mediation of expectancy effects: A taxonomy of expectancy situations
- 19 Analysis of variance in the study of interpersonal expectations: Theory testing, interaction effects, and effect sizes
- 20 Statistical tools for meta-analysis: From straightforward to esoteric
- 21 The volunteer problem revisited
- 22 Assessment and prevention of expectancy effects in community mental health studies
- 23 Comment: Never-ending nets of moderators and mediators
- Author index
- Subject index
- Studies in Emotion and Social Interaction
23 - Comment: Never-ending nets of moderators and mediators
from Part III - The study of interpersonal expectations
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- List of contributors
- Introduction
- Part I Research on interpersonal expectations
- Part II Research on the mediation of interpersonal expectations through nonverbal behavior
- Part III The study of interpersonal expectations
- 17 The methodological imagination: Insoluble problems or investigable questions?
- 18 Issues in studying the mediation of expectancy effects: A taxonomy of expectancy situations
- 19 Analysis of variance in the study of interpersonal expectations: Theory testing, interaction effects, and effect sizes
- 20 Statistical tools for meta-analysis: From straightforward to esoteric
- 21 The volunteer problem revisited
- 22 Assessment and prevention of expectancy effects in community mental health studies
- 23 Comment: Never-ending nets of moderators and mediators
- Author index
- Subject index
- Studies in Emotion and Social Interaction
Summary
Psychological social psychologists frequently discuss moderators and mediators, familiar concepts given systematic attention in Baron and Kenny's (1986) widely cited paper. Social psychologists linked to sociology, thinking of Morris Rosenberg's still useful 1968 book, are more likely to speak of specifiers or conditional variables than moderators, and to refer to mediators as intervening factors. Whether described as mediators and moderators or as conditional and intervening variables, these phenomena are the central concerns in the contributions to part III of this volume, and appropriately so, in view of the fact that they have occupied a substantial portion of Robert Rosenthal's scholarly attention.
Building on a review of selected points made by Baron and Kenny (1986) and by Rosenberg (1968), these concluding comments will consider ways in which the phenomena of moderation and mediation are represented in themes of the chapters that constitute part III. The exercise may suggest additional ways of thinking about the contributions to this part, generating along the way a few amendments to the Baron-Kenny and Rosenberg guidelines.
As noted in Baron and Kenny (1986), a moderator is a variable that interacts with the focal independent variable to influence the dependent variable. Within categories or across levels of a moderator, the strength and/or direction of the relationship between predictor and outcome vary. A moderator relationship is often represented in a path diagram with an arrow coming in perpendicular to the path linking the independent and dependent variables, as in Figure 23.1 A. In contrast, a mediator is a variable that “represents the generative mechanism through which the focal independent variable … influence(s) the dependent variable” (Baron & Kenny, 1986, p. 1173).
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- Information
- Interpersonal ExpectationsTheory, Research and Applications, pp. 454 - 474Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1993