Response acquiescence can forge fake statistical links between unrelated measures

Evidence

Furthermore, researchers noted long ago that unbalanced scales usually correlate best with other unbalanced scales (Hyman and Sheatsley, 1954; Campbell, Siegman, and Rees, 1967)—or indeed with anything potentially affected by yea-saying, including single-item questions. Shared acquiescence could thus create a connection between any two things, no matter what they (supposedly) measure. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 775

Categorization

Category: Causal Relationships

• QUESTION: This is a foundational critique of survey methodology worth chasing further—how often do published correlations in personality/social psychology trace back to shared acquiescence rather than real construct overlap?
• XREF: Connects to the general literature on invalid correlations/methodological artifacts—the ‘garbage in, garbage out’ problem in quantitative social science.

Related

• Response acquiescence can fabricate correlations between unrelated survey scales (similarity 0.90)
• Unbalanced scales inflate reliability alphas and correlations through acquiescence (similarity 0.84)
• Acquiescence inflated but did not fully generate authoritarianism scale correlations (similarity 0.83)
• One-directional survey items make scales falsely look valid and consistent (similarity 0.83)
• Response bias makes balanced surveys appear spurious multifactor structures (similarity 0.81)
• Acquiescence skews balanced-scale answers toward agreement, not genuine endorsement (similarity 0.81)
• Unbalanced survey scales allow response bias to inflate apparent reliability (similarity 0.79)
• The F Scale partly measured a tendency to agree regardless of content (similarity 0.78)