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

Abstract

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.

Keywords: Artifactual prospective effects; Correlation with measurement errors; Longitudinal studies; Meta-analysis; Quality of social relations; Reversion to mediocrity; Self-esteem.

Fig. 1

Predicted quality of relations at T2 for individuals with high (1), average (0), and low (−1) self-esteem at T1, respectively, when conditioning on mean quality of relations at T1 (A), at T1 when conditioning on mean quality of relations at T2 (B), and at T1 and T2 when not conditioning on quality of relations at T1 (C).

Fig. 2

A hypothetical data producing model where general positivity (Pos.) affects trait-like (i.e. general) self-esteem (gSE) and quality of social relations (gQR) which, in turn, affect measurements at two occasions. The model does not contain any genuine prospective effects between quality of relations and self-esteem, but we may still expect artifactual effects of self-esteem at T1 on quality of relations at T2 while controlling for quality of relations at T1, and vice versa. A more complete description is available in the text.