The organisation and content of trauma memories in survivors of road traffic accidents

We investigated the trauma narratives of 131 road traffic accident survivors prospectively, at 1 week, 6 weeks, and 3 months post-trauma. At 1 and 6 weeks, narratives of survivors with acute stress disorder (ASD) or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were less coherent and included more dissociation content. By 3 months, their narratives also contained more repetition, more non-consecutive chunks, and more sensory words. Traumatic brain injury was associated with a separate characteristic, confusion, at all three time points. Three aspects of narrative organisation at 1 week--repetition, non-consecutive chunks, and coherence--predicted PTSD severity at 3 months after controlling for initial symptoms. The results suggest both a strong concurrent and predictive relationship between narrative disorganisation and ASD/PTSD but that as people recover from ASD, their narratives do not necessarily become less disorganised.     

The effect of testing instructions for handling social desirability on the Eysenck personality questionnaire

The Hebrew version of the Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ-R) was administered to two groups. One group was given special ‘feedback’ instructions intended to make subjects aware of the extent of their distortions due to responding in a socially desirable direction, and of the possibility of detection of such distortions. The other group was given ordinary standard instructions. There was a substantial change in the mean of the Lie (L) scale, a moderate change in the Neuroticism (N) scale and no significant change in the mean of the Extraversion (E) and Psychoticism (P) scales. The reliability estimates and factor pattern showed a marked improvement of the P scale and some improvement of the N and L scales, and no effect on the E scale.     

The social self

Pastoral Psychology -     

Correlations of multiple rider behaviors with self-reported attitudes,perspectives on traffic rule strictness and social desirability

Powered Two-Wheeler (PTW) riders constitute a very vulnerable group of road users, while riding a PTW is considerably more dangerous than using any other motor vehicle. Behavioral issues have been identified major moderating factors to PTW crashes, as riders display great variability in their attitudes towards road safety. Τhe aim of this paper is to present a thorough, overarching structure of relationships correlating various unsafe stated PTW rider behaviors (riding after alcohol consumption, speeding, helmet use and texting) with several self-reported attitude parameters and factors regarding rider perspectives on traffic rule strictness and social desirability. A structural equation model (SEM) was developed using data from the ESRA2 survey, which provided a broad sample encompassing 5,958 respondent riders from 32 countries. Numerous statistical relationships were discovered and quantified correlating the four examined unsafe rider behaviors with eight latent unobserved variables. All covariances between unsafe behaviors were found to be positive and statistically significant, indicating that a rider who will engage more frequently in every single one of the four examined unsafe riding behaviors is more likely to also engage in all the others as well.     

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.     

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.     

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.