What are moderators and mediators?

A mediating variable (or mediator) explains the process through which two variables are related, while a moderating variable (or moderator) affects the strength and direction of that relationship.

What are mediators in psychology?

n. 1. an unseen process, event, or system that exists between a stimulus and a response, between the source and destination of a neural impulse, or between the transmitter and receiver of communications. 2. a person—for example, a lawyer or psychologist—who helps contending parties communicate and reach a compromise.

How do you describe a moderator?

A moderator is a variable that affects the strength of the relation between the predictor and criterion variable. Moderators specify when a relation will hold. It can be qualitative (e.g., sex, race, class…) or quantitative (e.g., drug dosage or level of reward).

What is the meaning of moderator in the research?

n. 1. an independent variable that changes the nature of the relationship between other variables. For example, if a researcher examined the relationship between gender and math performance, a significant difference might emerge.

What is another word for moderator?

In this page you can discover 12 synonyms, antonyms, idiomatic expressions, and related words for moderator, like: mediator, chairman, coordinator, moderators, umpire, peacemaker, chairwoman, Skier-Hughes, judge, arbitrator and papajohn.

What is moderation in psychology?

Moderation is a way to check whether that third variable influences the strength or direction of the relationship between an independent and dependent variable. An easy way to remember this is that the moderator variable might change the strength of a relationship from strong to moderate, to nothing at all.

What is an example of a moderator variable?

Moderating variables can be qualitative (non-numerical values like race, socioeconomic class or sex) or quantitative (numerical values like weight, reward level or age). For example: According to the American Psychological Association, stress has a bigger impact on men than women.

What are moderators used for?

A moderator is a material used in a nuclear reactor to slow down the neutrons produced from fission. By slowing the neutrons down the probability of a neutron interacting with 235U nuclei is greatly increased thereby maintaining the chain reaction.

What is a mediator variable in research?

In communication research, a mediating variable is a variable that links the independent and the dependent variables, and whose existence explains the relationship between the other two variables. A mediating variable is also known as a mediator variable or an intervening variable.