The DOI matches its Crossref record; 1 of the 1 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Enough Already about “Black Box” Experiments: Studying Mediation Is More Difficult than Most Scholars Suppose
Abstract
The question of how causal effects are transmitted is fascinating and inevitably arises whenever experiments are presented. Social scientists cannot be faulted for taking a lively interest in “mediation,” the process by which causal influences are transmitted. However, social scientists frequently underestimate the difficulty of establishing causal pathways in a rigorous empirical manner. We argue that the statistical methods currently used to study mediation are flawed and that even sophisticated experimental designs cannot speak to questions of mediation without the aid of strong assumptions. The study of mediation is more demanding than most social scientists suppose and requires not one experimental study but rather an extensive program of experimental research.
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Cites
Introduction to Statistical Mediation Analysis
MacKinnon, D. P. (2012) · doi:10.4324/9780203809556 · Cited by 5,618
Cited by
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Income Mobility Breeds Tolerance for Income Inequality: Cross-National and Experimental Evidence
Shariff, A. F., Wiwad, D., & Aknin, L. B. (2016) · Perspectives on Psychological Science · doi:10.1177/1745691616635596 · Cited by 202
Layered evaluation of interactive adaptive systems: framework and formative methods
Paramythis, A., Weibelzahl, S., & Masthoff, J. (2010) · User Modeling and User-Adapted Interaction · doi:10.1007/s11257-010-9082-4 · Cited by 145
Ratner, K. G., Dotsch, R., Wigboldus, D. H. J., van Knippenberg, A., & Amodio, D. M. (2014) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/a0036498 · Cited by 144
Perils or Promise of Ethnic Integration? Evidence from a Hard Case in Burundi
SAMII, C. (2013) · American Political Science Review · doi:10.1017/s0003055413000282 · Cited by 102
Social context and the real-world consequences of social anxiety
Hur, J., DeYoung, K. A., Islam, S., Anderson, A. S., Barstead, M. G., & Shackman, A. J. (2020) · Psychological Medicine · doi:10.1017/s0033291719002022 · Cited by 74
Moral cleansing as hypocrisy: When private acts of charity make you feel better than you deserve.
O'Connor, K., Effron, D. A., & Lucas, B. J. (2020) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/pspa0000195 · Cited by 65
Alderson, R. M., Patros, C. H. G., Tarle, S. J., Hudec, K. L., Kasper, L. J., & Lea, S. E. (2017) · Child Neuropsychology · doi:10.1080/09297049.2015.1105207 · Cited by 33
Wuttke, A. (2020) · Motivation and Emotion · doi:10.1007/s11031-019-09801-w · Cited by 15
Signaling (in)tolerance: Social evaluation and metaethical relativism and objectivism
Moss, D., Montealegre, A., Bush, L. S., Caviola, L., & Pizarro, D. (2025) · Cognition · doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2024.105984 · Cited by 2
Metadata
- Authors
- Green, D. P., Ha, S. E., & Bullock, J. G.
- Venue
- The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2010-02-23
- Volume
- 628
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 200-208
- ISSN
- 0002-7162 (ISSN-L)
- 1552-3349
- OpenAlex
- W2122472737
- Cited by
- 299
- References
- 1
- FWCI
- 12.93
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
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