Personality facet loadings onto the general factor of personality change when social desirability responding is considered

Abstract

The General Factor of Personality (GFP) has been found to be more robust under faking conditions and to correlate significantly with both self-report faking and social desirability responding, yet some still regard the GFP as a meaningful construct. This study examines the structure of the GFP (based on facet loadings on the first unrotated principal axis factor) when five individual social desirability/impression management scores (as well as the total) are partialled from the facets. Controlling for the social desirability/impression management variance altered the loadings of the personality facets. Specifically, loadings for the facets varied in magnitude, and for some, even changed direction when individual and combined measures of social desirability/impression management were removed. The results suggest that the GFP is not consistent in structure and is influenced by social desirability/impression management. Further, the results suggest that the interpretation of the structure of the GFP may change depending on how individuals present themselves when completing personality measures.