Questionable necessity effects of positive affect on life satisfaction: A comment on Yang et al. (2026)

Yang et al. conducted analyses with necessary condition analysis (NCA) and concluded that positive affect is a necessary condition for life satisfaction. However, it has been established that necessity effects in NCA may be spurious due to correlations between the variables. Here, we found that necessity effects reported by Yang et al. fell within “ranges of spuriousness”, meaning that they could be accounted for by correlations between the variables. Hence, the findings by Yang et al. may have been spurious and their conclusion of positive affect being necessary for life satisfaction premature. It is important for users of NCA to be aware that necessity effects in NCA do not prove necessity any more than correlations prove causality. For increased rigor, we recommend users of NCA to estimate, as we did here, ranges of spuriousness and to require that estimated necessity effects are above the range before concluding necessity.