Pseudo Effects: How Method Biases Can Produce Spurious Findings About Close Relationships

Research on interpersonal relationships frequently relies on accurate self-reporting across various relationship facets (e.g., conflict, trust, appreciation). Yet, shared method biases – which may greatly inflate associations between measures – are rarely accounted for during measurement validation or hypothesis testing. To examine how method biases can impact relationship research, the present research embarked on the ironic exploration of a new construct – Pseudo – comprised of irrelevant relationship evaluations (e.g., “My relationship has very good Saturn”). Pseudo was moderately associated with common relationship measures (e.g., satisfaction, commitment), and predicted those measures three weeks later. Results of a dyadic longitudinal study suggest that Pseudo taps into method biases, particularly sentiment override (i.e., people’s tendencies to project their global relationship sentiments onto every relationship evaluation). We conclude that psychometric standards must be sufficiently rigorous to distinguish genuine constructs and associations from methodological artefacts, which can otherwise pose a serious validity threat.