Three issues in causal ananlyses of relationship formation

Abstract

People form and dissolve relations based on categories (age, gender, race, or religion), physical looks (unattractive vs. attractive), and attitudes (dissimilar vs. similar). Baron and Kenny (1986) showed that just demonstrating that the predictor or independent variable (IV) determines the outcome or dependent variable (DV) is inadequate for understanding causal processes. The issues of how the IV effect is transmitted to the DV (i.e., mediation processes) and whether the IV-DV link is stronger in some than other conditions (i.e., moderating processes) is too important to ignore.