Puzzlingly High Correlations in fMRI Studies of Emotion, Personality, and Social Cognition 1

@article{Vul2009PuzzlinglyHC,
  title={Puzzlingly High Correlations in fMRI Studies of Emotion, Personality, and Social Cognition 1},
  author={Edward Vul and Christine R. Harris and Piotr Winkielman and Harold Pashler},
  journal={Perspectives on Psychological Science},
  year={2009},
  volume={4},
  pages={274 - 290}
}
Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studiesofemotion, personality, and social cognition have drawn much attention in recent years, with high-profile studies frequently reporting extremely high (e.g., >.8) correlations between brain activation and personality measures. We show that these correlations are higher than should be expected given the (evidently limited) reliability of both fMRI and personality measures. The high correlations are all the more puzzling because method sections… 
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Correlations in Social Neuroscience Aren't Voodoo: Commentary on Vul et al. (2009)
TLDR
This issue explains how whole-brain regressions are a valid single-step method of identifying brain regions that have reliable correlations with individual difference measures and provides a simulation to demonstrate that typical fMRI sample sizes will only rarely produce large correlations in the absence of any true effect.
1 Suspiciously high correlations in brain imaging research
Edward Vul [evul@ucsd.edu]; Harold Pashler [hpashler@ucsd.edu]; UCSD Psychology In early 2005 a speaker visiting our department reported that blood oxygen-level dependent (BOLD) activity in a small…
Discussion of “Puzzlingly High Correlations in fMRI Studies of Emotion, Personality, and Social Cognition” by Vul et al. (2009)
  • N. Lazar
  • Psychology
    Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science
  • 2009
TLDR
The issue of nonindependent analysis in behavioral neuroimaging, whereby correlations are artificially inflated as a result of spurious statistical procedures, is raised but the phenomenon in question is a type of selection bias and hence is neither new nor unique to fMRI.
Correlations in Social Neuroscience Aren't Voodoo
TLDR
In an article in this issue, Vul, Harris, Winkielman, & Pashler claim that brain-personality correlations in many social neuroscience studies and those in related fields are ''implausibly high'' and should not be believed, but a simulation shows that typical fMRI sample sizes will only rarely produce large correlations in the absence of any true correlation.
Suspiciously high correlations in brain imaging research
Edited by Scott O. Lilienfeld and Irwin D. Waldman. © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Published 2017 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. In early 2005, a speaker visiting our department reported that…
Commentary on Vul et al.'s (2009) “Puzzlingly High Correlations in fMRI Studies of Emotion, Personality, and Social Cognition”
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This issue contends the authors' argument is overstated and that their work can be distilled down to two points already familiar to the neuroimaging community: that the multiple testing problem must be accounted for, and that reporting of methods and results should be improved.
The reliability paradox: Why robust cognitive tasks do not produce reliable individual differences
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Item-Wise Interindividual Brain-Behavior Correlation in Task Neuroimaging Analysis
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Simulations and example analyses demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed correlation procedure for task neuroimaging studies, which enhances statistical power via testing the significance of small correlation coefficients from trials against zero rather than simply pursuing the highest correlation coefficient.
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Correlations in Social Neuroscience Aren't Voodoo: Commentary on Vul et al. (2009)
TLDR
This issue explains how whole-brain regressions are a valid single-step method of identifying brain regions that have reliable correlations with individual difference measures and provides a simulation to demonstrate that typical fMRI sample sizes will only rarely produce large correlations in the absence of any true effect.
Correlations in Social Neuroscience Aren't Voodoo
TLDR
In an article in this issue, Vul, Harris, Winkielman, & Pashler claim that brain-personality correlations in many social neuroscience studies and those in related fields are ''implausibly high'' and should not be believed, but a simulation shows that typical fMRI sample sizes will only rarely produce large correlations in the absence of any true correlation.
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Big Correlations in Little Studies: Inflated fMRI Correlations Reflect Low Statistical Power—Commentary on Vul et al. (2009)
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    Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science
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TLDR
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