Real and imagined perils: A reply to Stoeber and Gaudreau (2017)

•A response to Stoeber and Gaudreau (2017) is provided.•Areas of agreement and disagreement are discussed.•It is argued that Stoeber and Gaudreau misunderstood the perils of partialling.•No call to reject partialling was made.•Caution is still required when drawing conclusions for unresidualised variables based on their residualised counterparts.

I reply to Stoeber and Gaudreau's (2017) recent commentary on my paper outlining the “perils of partialling” when examining multidimensional perfectionism (Hill, 2014). In my original paper I argued that the conceptual meaning of one of the two superordinate dimensions of perfectionism, perfectionistic strivings, may change once its relationship with the other superordinate dimension, perfectionistic concerns, is controlled for or partialled (i.e., when residual perfectionistic strivings is created and examined). In light of this possibility, I argued that it may be inappropriate or “perilous” to draw conclusions regarding perfectionistic strivings based on residual perfectionistic strivings. Stoeber and Gaudreau disagree. In responding to their commentary, I explain how and why our two perspectives differ. I argue that, despite their view to the contrary, there is sufficient reason to be concerned regarding the conceptual meaning of residual perfectionistic strivings. In addition, I also argue that Stoeber and Gaudreau have misunderstood where the peril lies when using partial correlations and have concluded that my paper called for a rejection of the examination of partial correlations when this was not the case.