Further Exploration of the Relationship between Locus of Control and Social Desirability

Abstract

Rocter (1966) has reported correlations between the Internality-Externality (I-E) dimensions of his Locus of Control scale and the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability scale that range from -.07 to -.35. Cone (1971) reported a series of significant correlations ranging from -.29 to -.70 using the Edwards (1957) Social Desirability scale. Phares (1976) suggested such higher correlations occur in situations in which subjects perceive it to be to their advanrage to be seen in a socially desirable light. In the present smdy 224 (141 female and 83 male) students in introductory psychology routinely completed the Rotter's and Edwards's scales for which they received partial course credit. Subjects were primarily of rural middle-class background. They were assured their responses would be anonymous. The Pearson correlation between these scores was -.408, which suggests that the internality dimension of Rotter's scale is associated with social desirability (Rotter's M = 9.7, SD = 3.7; Edwards's M = 27.4, SD = 5.4). These data do not support Phnres's (1976) hyporhesis that positive correlations between Rotter's scale and social desirability are based on reinforcements to look good in the testing condition and suggest st least two alternatives: (a) Rotter's scale may not be very robust as it is confounded with a socially desirable response set or (b) a tendency to respond in a socially desirable manner may be a personalicy trait that covaries with general locus of concrol rather than simply a response set (Paulhus, 1984). The fact that scores on Rotcer's scale correlate higher with scores from Edwards's scale than the Marlowe-Crowne scale supports Paulhus's (1984) contention that social desirability is composed of che factors of self-deception and impression management. It appears that Edwards's scale measures the former factor (Paulhus, 1984).