Your friend is reading a research article about a study that

Your friend is reading a research article about a study that found a statistically significant positive correlation between shyness and test anxiety in a sample of 200 undergraduate students, r(198) = .49, p = .001. Your friend believes that this is proof that shyness causes test anxiety. Discuss at least two things that your friend doesn\'t understand about correlations.

Solution

1) correlations do not imply causation, i.e, just because the two variables increase together does not mean one is pushing the other.

2) Correlation only deduce linear relationship, and is easily affected by outliers.