Assessing social desirability in family self-report

This study focused on social desirability in family members' self-reports. 32 clinical families (93 family members) were given self-report measures from the McMaster and Circumplex family-assessment models and a measure of social desirability. Clinicians assessed these families on clinical rating scales from the same models. Regression analyses were used to examine the relationship between self-reports, social desirability scores, and clinicians' ratings. It was expected that social desirability would be a suppressor variable (i.e., when accounted for, the similarity between clinicians' and family members' ratings would be enhanced). This did not occur; instead, social desirability was significantly but negatively correlated with ratings of pathology. Results provide evidence that correcting for social desirability on clinical pencil-and-paper tests is not supported.     

Psychological androgyny and social desirability

The concept of psychological androgyny, because of its implications for sex roles, social change, and human development, is presently of special theoretical interest. Psychologically androgynous persons, as identified by the Bern Sex Role Inventory (BSRI), score higher on both its femininity and masculinity scales. Given the psychometric properties of the BSRI, it can be hypothesized that androgynous persons will have higher social desirability scores. Yet, the "masculine male" and the "feminine female" may be the most socially desirable, in that they conform to normative expectations. Consequently it can also be hypothesized that individuals who are either masculine-typed males or feminine-typed females on the BSRI will have the higher social desirability scores. Neither prediction was found to be entirely accurate; instead, androgynous and feminine-typed individuals were found to have higher social desirability scores. Moreover, the data reveal that the BSRI femininity scale has social desirability characteristics which are sex-specific.     

Style and substance in social desirability scales

The purpose of the present study was to examine the nature of a social desirability measure under two different types of instructions for filling out personality questionnaires in an occupational selection setting. 1230 male applicants for public vehicle driving licences were administered Cattett's 16PF and the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ). The subjects were randomly assigned to two groups. One was given standard instructions for filling out these questionnaires; the second was given special instructions designed to reduce social desirability response bias. Social desirability was indexed by the Lie scale of the EPQ. Based on Eysenck's theorizing concerning the meaning of the Lie scale, the following hypothesis was tested: the factorial location of the Lie scale in the personality domain will differ under the two forms of instructions. It should appear separately from other personality factors under the standard instructions, whereas under the special instructions it should be subsumed under the personality factor which measures conformity. The results supported this hypothesis. The discussion focuses on the meaning of the Lie scale under conditions that elicit social desirability bias and on the role of special instructions in reducing this bias.     

The conceptual link between social desirability and cultural normativity

Psychologists have a recurrent concern that socially desirable responding (SDR) is a form of response distortion that compromises the validity of self‐report measures, especially in high‐stakes situations where participants are motivated to make a good impression. Psychologists have used various strategies to minimise SDR or its impact, for example, forced choice responding, ipsatization, and direct measures of social desirability. However, empirical evidence suggests that SDR is a robust phenomenon existing in many cultures and a substantive variable with meaningful associations with other psychological variables and outcomes. Here, we review evidence of the occurrence of SDR across cultures and tie SDR to the study of cultural normativity and cultural consonance in anthropology. We suggest that cultural normativity is an important component of SDR, which may partly explain the adaptiveness of SDR and its association with positive outcomes.     

Evaluation of the BSRI masculine and feminine items using desirability and stereotype ratings

This study empirically tested Bem's (1974) assumption that the BSRI Masculinity and Femininity scales measure sex-typed standards of desirable behavior for men and women in American society. The adequacy of items in the two scales was evaluated by Bem's (1974) criteria using two types of desirability and stereotype ratings. Results obtained in all the experimental conditions except one involving Bem's desirability instructions and Bem's rating scale did not support the tested assumption. Implications of these results for revising the BSRI scales were discussed.     

Measuring rationality independent of social desirability

The development of a test to measure Elli's concept of rationality is described. In the first study discussed, a 58-item test is developed to measure rationality, and the reliability and convergent validity of the test is described. In a second study, the discriminant validity of the test is examined. An attempt is also made to reduce social-desirability content in the test by eliminating items most highly correlated with a Social Desirability Scale. The final 44-item test is found to be high in both reliability and validity. The factor structure of the test is also examined.     

The impact of social desirability on psychometric measures of aggression

Although many studies have focused on the effects of social desirability in personality measures, few have analysed its effects on such highly undesirable behaviour as aggressiveness. The present study analyzes the impact of social desirability on measures of direct and indirect aggression and on the relationships between both kinds of aggression with impulsivity, using a method that enables the content factors of the measures to be isolated from social desirability. Results showed that aggression measures are highly affected by social desirability and that the relationships between the two forms of aggression and impulsivity are due to the content measured by the tests and not to a common social desirability factor.     

Self-knowledge and social desirability of personality traits

Research into the self-concept has shown that self-knowledge is affected by factors such as trait desirability, trait vagueness, and self-variability. Among these, social desirability appears to play a prominent role. In a multidimensional view of the self, however, several studies indicate that in special conditions people show adequate self-knowledge in specific personality dimensions. The present study tests this with respect to extraversion and anxiety predisposition on a sample of 160 late adolescents. The main results confirm the prominent influence of social desirability, but they also provide support for the hypothesis of the specificity of self-perception. Despite a common pattern, the effects of desirability appeared, to some extent, to be less strong for anxiety than for extraversion. Several possible interpretations of this finding are discussed. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A procedure for isolating social desirability variance in a three-way component analysis

Three-way component analysis aims to summarize all the information in a three-way data set related, for example, to the responses of individuals to a set of items in a set of situations. The data are decomposed into three component matrices (person, item and situation components) and a core matrix. Such data are generally obtained by means of a situation-response questionnaire administered to a sample of participants. This paper proposes a preprocessing procedure for controlling social desirability in these kinds of questionnaires. The essential idea is to isolate the variance due to social desirability response bias and remove it from the data set. The procedure is demonstrated through its empirical application in the personality domain. Its performance is also assessed by means of a simulation study which shows that the presence of social desirability bias in a data set had different consequences: (1) the variance effect due to persons increased, and the effect of the triple interaction persons × items × situations decreased; (2) the person component and core matrix were partially distorted. However, the social desirability bias in the data set was successfully controlled by our preprocessing method.     

Response bias,social desirability and dissimulation

This review set out to review the extensive literature on response bias, and particularly dissimulating a socially desirable response to self-report data. Various terminological differences are discussed as well as the way test constructors attempt to measure or overcome social desirability response sets. As an example of the research in this field, four types of studies measuring social desirability in the Eysenckian personality measures (MPI, EPI, EPQ) are reviewed. Also studies of faking in psychiatric symptom inventories, and a wide range of other tests are briefly reviewed. Various equivocal results from attempts to determine what makes some measures more prone to social desirability than others. However there appears to be growing evidence that social desirability is a relatively stable, multidimensional trait, rather than a situationally-specific response set. Faking studies may also be used to examine people's stereotypes and images of normality and abnormality, and various studies of‘abnormal groups’ perception of normality are examined. Recommendations for further work in this area are proposed.