Pathfinder Arcanist vs Spellresistance

Question

Arcanists have a class feature named Arcane Reservoir

Points from the arcanist reservoir are used to fuel many of the arcanist’s powers. In addition, the arcanist can expend 1 point from her arcane reservoir as a free action whenever she casts an arcanist spell. If she does, she can choose to increase the caster level by 1 or increase the spell’s DC by 1. She can expend no more than 1 point from her reservoir on a given spell in this way.

As you can see from this line

she can choose to increase the caster level by 1

my question now is does this increase in caster level for the spell also increase the caster level bonus for rolls against spell resistance.

Answer 1

Yes, it does.

So, technically, people don’t really have caster levels.¹ Spells do. People have the thing that their spells use as caster level, which is usually equal to their class level (except when it isn’t). When you need to overcome spell resistance, what you are doing is pitting that spell’s caster level against their SR. If you increase the spell’s caster level, you increase the value you use against their SR.

This also applies to every other use of caster level in a spell—range or duration are the most common, but also pretty often damage, and more niche stuff like dispel checks. If the spell’s caster level goes up, all those things go up. For an increase in caster level to be limited to just certain ways, the bonus would have to say that, like “bonus to caster level for the purpose of \$X\$,” or whatever.

1. _{The rules aren’t super-great about being consistent about this, and you will see rules talking about people’s caster levels. But the original definition of caster level is something a spell has, and at least some portions of the rule—including this arcanist feature—are good about wording things that way. The arcanist doesn’t increase “her” caster level by 1, she increases “the” caster level by 1—in context, that’s the spell’s caster level.}