Relationship of body image to social desirability.

Abstract

Recent research has suggested that the social desirability factor may be considered both as a response set, which exerts a contaminating influence on personality tests (Edwards, 1957), and as a measure of pathology. With respect to the latter, Tolor and Boitano (1960) found that increased severity of psycho-pathology tends to be associated with a decreased ability to make socially acceptable choices on a check list consisting of an equal number of socially approved and socially disapproved items. Moreover, Fordyce (1956) pointed out that the “psychotic factor” resembles a definition of social undesirability. The present study represented an attempt to focus attention on the possible meaning of differences in social desirability in terms of differences in degree of ego-strengths of subjects. The purpose, therefore, was to determine the relationship between one aspect of ego strength, namely, the body image as reflected in the figure drawings, and the social desirability variable, as measured by a check list.