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Category: Project

Description: The analyses of Quoidbach et al. (2019) indicate that unhappy individuals are more likely to subsequently interact with others. From a theoretical point of view, this finding is contrary to most existing psychological studies on this matter. Motivated by these theoretically surprising findings, this commentary reports re-analyses of the openly available data of Quoidbach et al.’s study (2019). These re-analyses indicate that a statistically problematic control variable is responsible for this counterintuitive finding. Models reporting raw associations and including alternative control variables suggest that unhappy individuals are less likely to subsequently interact. To support the transparency and the trustworthiness of psychological science, I encourage further open science practices and suggest that reports of raw data and stepwise model results are more frequently reported.