Desirable Response Tendencies Research Articles

Real versus illusory personal growth in response to COVID-19 pandemic stressors

BackgroundThere is considerable evidence of widespread emotional distress associated with the COVID-19 pandemic. A growing number of studies have assessed posttraumatic growth related to the current pandemic; but, none have considered whether reported growth is real or illusory (i.e., characterized by avoidant or defensive coping that results in higher levels of distress). The purpose of this study was to extend this literature by assessing growth specific to the pandemic in people reporting high levels of COVID-related stress and estimating the extent of real and illusory COVID-19-related growth. MethodsParticipants were 893 adults from Canada and the United States with high levels of COVID-related stress who provided complete responses on measures of posttraumatic growth, disability, and measures of general and COVID-related distress as part of a larger longitudinal survey. ResultsApproximately 77 % of participants reported moderate to high growth in at least one respect, the most common being developing greater appreciation for healthcare workers, for the value of one’s own life, for friends and family, for each day, as well as changing priorities about what is important in life and greater feelings of self-reliance. Consistent with predictions, cluster analysis identified two clusters characterized by high growth, one comprising 32 % of the sample and reflective of real growth (i.e., reporting little disability and stable symptoms across time) and the other comprising 17 % of the sample and reflective of illusory growth (i.e., reporting high disability and worsening symptoms). These clusters did not differ in terms of socially desirable response tendencies; but, the illusory growth cluster reported greater increases in alcohol use since onset of the pandemic. ConclusionConsistent with research regarding personal growth in response to prior pandemics and COVID-19, we found evidence to suggest moderate to high levels of COVID-related growth with respect to appreciation for healthcare workers, life, friends and family, and self-reliance. Findings from our cluster analysis support the thesis that many reports of COVID-related personal growth reflect ineffectual pandemic-related coping as opposed to true growth. These findings have important implications for developing strategies to optimize stress resilience and posttraumatic growth during chronically stressful events such as pandemics.

The moderating role of socially desirable responding in implicit-explicit attitudes toward asylum seekers.

Implicit and explicit attitudes correlate under certain conditions and researchers are interested in the moderating factors of this relationship. This paper explored the role of socially desirable responding in this relationship by testing the hypothesis that impression management (IM; i.e., deliberate response modification) and self-deceptive enhancement (SDE; i.e., positive self-bias) play moderating roles in the relationship of implicit-explicit attitudes toward asylum seekers in Australia. Seventy-four students responded to a battery of measures and the results revealed that IM (but not SDE) moderated this relationship to the extent that higher IM scores weakened the correspondence between implicit and explicit attitude scores. This suggests that attitudes toward asylum seekers might be susceptible to socially desirable response tendencies and in combination with the finding that IM was negatively related to explicit attitudes, it is argued that self-presentation concerns result in the deliberate attenuation of reported negative explicit attitudes.

Adolescent Narcissism, Aggression, and Prosocial Behavior: The Relevance of Socially Desirable Responding

ABSTRACTAn important threat to validity in personality research pertains to an individual's motivation to respond in a socially desirable manner on self-report inventories. This issue was examined in this study in the context of narcissism, aggression, and prosocial behavior in a sample of at-risk adolescents. Participants were 161 adolescents (128 males, 29 females, 4 not reported) ranging in age from 16 to 19 years who were attending a residential program for youth who have dropped out of school. Overall, socially desirable response tendencies were negatively correlated with vulnerable narcissism and self-reported aggression. Moreover, low socially desirable responses strengthened the relation between narcissism and self-reported aggression. Socially desirable responding was not associated with self- or peer-reported prosocial behavior and did not moderate the relation between narcissism and prosocial behavior. These findings indicate that the relation between narcissism and aggression is attenuated by concerns with social desirability. However, further work is needed in broader samples of adolescents to more closely examine whether social desirability concerns actually mitigate aggression among some youth or signify underreporting of one's problem behaviors.

Inattentive and Socially Desirable Responding

Researchers consistently have demonstrated the distorting effects that inattentive (responding without regard for survey content) and socially desirable (presenting one’s self in an overly positive way) responding can have on quantitative data. These threats to validity usually go undetected in counseling research, which is concerning given that counseling research often considers implications for practice and that research-based practice is in demand. In this article, the authors review practical approaches for detecting and addressing inattentive and socially desirable response tendencies in counseling research, thereby optimizing the validity of conclusions inferred from data.

Making Professional Decisions in Research: Measurement and Key Predictors

ABSTRACTThe professional decision-making in research (PDR) measure was administered to 400 National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded and industry-funded investigators, along with measures of cynicism, moral disengagement, compliance disengagement, impulsivity, work stressors, knowledge of responsible conduct of research (RCR), and socially desirable response tendencies. Negative associations were found for the PDR and measures of cynicism, moral disengagement, and compliance disengagement, while positive associations were found for the PDR and RCR knowledge and positive urgency, an impulsivity subscale. PDR scores were not related to socially desirable responding, or to measures of work stressors and the remaining impulsivity subscales. In a multivariate logistic regression analysis, lower moral disengagement scores, higher RCR knowledge, and identifying the United States as one’s nation of origin emerged as key predictors of stronger performance on the PDR. The implications of these findings for understanding the measurement of decision-making in research and future directions for research and RCR education are discussed.

English

Stigmatization consequent to anti-fat bias (AFB) may affect the services people who are obese receive from health professionals, including physical education and exercise science (PEX) professionals. In this study, we compared AFB levels of American and Mexican PEX students and Mexican athletes. We also investigated if socially desirable (SD) response tendencies threaten the validity of the explicit AFB measure used in this study. Participants (N = 118) completed measures of explicit and implicit AFB. Explicit AFB scores were not different between groups, but there were some subsample differences and interactions on the implicit AFB measure. Most implicit AFB subsample scores were significantly different from 0, indicating the participants were, to some extent, implicitly biased against fat people. The correlations between SD scales and the explicit AFB scales indicated no substantive threat to the validity of those scales. These results indicate AFB may be an issue with future PEX professionals, and thus, further research on incidence levels and prevention strategies is warranted. Also, because explicit and implicit AFB scores were not significantly correlated, researchers should investigate whether implicit bias affects an individual’s explicit bias.

The General Factor of Personality in selection and assessment samples

In two large samples ( N 1 = 44,971, N 2 = 7793) we tested the General Factor of Personality (GFP) in the Big Five, measured during selection and assessment. A GFP could clearly be identified in the data, explaining approximately 50% of the Big Five variance. We found indications for socially desirable response tendencies in a subgroup that was tested for selection purposes. Yet, this tendency did not affect the personality factor structure or the GFP characteristics. Moreover, in the selection sample, the GFP was moderately related to the Overall Assessment Rating. The findings confirm the GFP in an applied setting and support the idea that the GFP does not merely reflect methodological artifacts but is substantive.

Racial differences in narcissistic tendencies

Black individuals have been found to report the highest levels of self-esteem of any racial group in the United States. The purpose of the present research was to examine whether Black individuals also report higher levels of narcissism than White individuals. Study 1 ( N = 367) found that Black individuals reported higher levels of narcissism than White individuals even when controlling for gender, self-esteem level, and socially desirable response tendencies. Study 2 ( N = 967) and Study 3 ( N = 315) found similar results such that Black individuals reported higher levels of narcissism than White individuals on the narcissism measures that captured less pathological facets of this construct. Study 3 also included indicators of psychological adjustment and found that the pathological aspects of narcissism were more strongly associated with maladjustment for Black individuals than for White individuals. The implications of these results for understanding the Black self-esteem advantage are discussed.

Socially Desirable Response Tendencies in Survey Research

Socially desirable responding (SDR) has been of long-standing interest to the field of marketing. Unfortunately, the construct has not always been well understood by marketing researchers. The authors provide a review of the SDR literature organized around three key issues—the conceptualization and measurement of SDR; the nomological constellation of personality traits, values, sociodemographics, and cultural factors associated with SDR; and the vexing issue of substance versus style in SDR measures. The authors review the current “state of the literature,” identify unresolved issues, and provide new empirical evidence to assess the generalizability of existing knowledge, which is disproportionately based on U.S. student samples, to a global context. The new evidence is derived from a large international data set involving 12,424 respondents in 26 countries on four continents.

Psychosocial functioning in young men predicts their personality stability over 15 years

A sample of male military conscripts in the Finnish Defence Forces ( N = 74) completed the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire [Cattell, R. B., Eber, H., & Tatsuoka, M. (1970). Handbook for the sixteen personality factor questionnaire. Champaign, Illinois: Institute for Personality and Ability Testing, Inc.] at age 20 and again as civilians at age 35. Although we found evidence of the continuity of personality over the 15-year span, changes were also observed in the direction of greater maturity. More important, we found considerable, predictable, individual differences in ipsative personality stability coefficients in our sample. Personality stability was predicted by indicators of psychosocial functioning at age 20, including psychiatrist ratings, military records, and self-reports, but not by cognitive ability or social desirability response tendencies. The data support our contention that the more psychologically adjusted is the individual at a young age, the higher is the long-term stability of his behavior dispositions.

The Value of Indirect Measures for Assessing Food Preferences in Abnormal Eating

Indirect measures have been used for the assessment of food preferences. These measures are indirect in the sense that the researcher does not ask a participant directly for his food preference, but derives his preference from a behavior. Typically, the affective priming paradigm and the Implicit Association Test have been used. The relevant processes in these paradigms are relatively automatic. One of the advantages of these paradigms is that responses are less likely to be influenced by socially desirable response tendencies and do not rely on the participant’s introspection. This paper provides an overview of research about relatively automatic associations with food in general and specifically for anorexia nervosa patients, dieters, and obese people. Multiple studies suggest that these paradigms can uncover food likes and dislikes. In most studies, no differences in food preferences were found between obese and lean people, or between restrained and unrestrained eaters. Possibly there simply are no group differences in automatic food associations. Alternatively, the employed indirect measures are not sensitive enough to detect truly existent differences. Interestingly, it was found that anorexia nervosa patients displayed a reduced sensitivity to the palatability of foods. Another interesting finding is that the presence of an immediate food related context influenced the automatic food associations. For now, the use of indirect measures in explaining differences between obese and lean people, and restrained and unrestrained eaters, does not seem a very viable approach. It might be for a clinical disorder such as anorexia nervosa.

Social Physique Anxiety, Physical Self-perceptions And Eating Disorder Risk

Purpose To ascertain if a previous unpublished study–(Bratrud, 1998) in which physical self-perceptions and social physique anxiety substantially and independently predicted eating disorder risk in a convenience sample of female college athletes–could be cross validated. METHOD Fifty eight female college athletes from five sports completed the Physical Self-Perception Profile (PSPP), the Social Physique Anxiety Scale (SPAS), and the Drive For Thinness (THIN), Bulimia (BUL), and Body Dissatisfaction (BDIS) subscales of the Eating Disorder Inventory. They also completed two scales designed to measure socially desirable (SD) response tendencies (Paulhus, 1991). As in the initial study, and in line with extant literature (e.g., Williamson et al., 1994), it was assumed that BDIS mediates the risk and development of eating disorders. Thus, the data were analyzed to assess the unique contribution of BDIS to risk prediction (THIN and BUL) after SD, SPAS and PSPP had been statistically controlled for. RESULTS Analysis of the data from the cross validation study gave results that were conceptually and substantively similar to the earlier study in terms of the pattern of associations between variables, and in the levels of predictive contributions of PSPP, SPAS, and BDIS to eating disorder risk as measured by THIN. However, the results of the two studies were dissimilar with regard to prediction of risk as measured by BUL. Specifically, after controlling for SD, PSPP explained 25% of the variance in THIN, followed by substantial unique contributions from SPAS (15%) and BDIS (18%) respectively. In the overall hierarchical analyses, 62% of the variance in THIN was explained (compared to 66% previously), but only 20% of the variance in BUL was explained (compared to 31% previously). The degree of R2 shrinkage between studies suggests that the samples could be combined for an overall data analysis with respect to predicting THIN, but such a combination might be problematic for further study of the contribution of PSPP, and SPAS to the prediction of BUL (Pehazur, 1982). CONCLUSION These data add support to the hypothesis that PSPP and SPAS may make important and unique contributions to predicting eating disorder risk as measured by THIN, but the previous findings with respect to predictions of BUL were not substantively replicated. Overall, this attempt to cross validate the results of an earlier study was partially successful, and further study of the contributions of PSPP and SPAS to eating disorder risk seems to be warranted.

Perceived leader integrity and ethical intentions of subordinates

This study examined the relationship between perceived leader integrity, belief in universal moral rules, and employees’ ethical intentions while controlling for socially desirable response tendencies. The results demonstrated that both higher perceived leader integrity and stronger beliefs in universal moral rules were associated with lower intentions to commit unethical acts. More importantly, the results revealed an interaction between perceived leader integrity and belief in universal moral rules. Individuals with a strong belief in universal moral rules exhibited low intentions of committing unethical acts, regardless of the perceived integrity of their leaders. For individuals who do not adhere to a belief in universal moral rules, intention to commit unethical acts decreased as the perceived integrity of the leaders increased.

Can we trust self-reports of driving? Effects of impression management on driver behaviour questionnaire responses

Driver behaviour is often studied by using self-reports and questionnaires. Despite their obvious advantages, questionnaires are vulnerable to socially desirable response tendencies. In this study, the effects of socially desirable responding on self-reports of driving were studied by recording self-reports of driving in both public and private settings. In public settings, 47 applicants for a driving instructor training course completed the driver behaviour questionnaire (DBQ) and balanced inventory for socially desirable responding as a part of the entrance examination. In a private setting, 54 students of that training course completed the same questionnaires anonymously in the classroom. ANOVA results showed a difference between the two settings in six DBQ item scores, such that aberrant behaviours were reported less frequently in public than in private settings. The results indicated that bias caused by socially desirable responding is relatively small in DBQ responses.

The Rotter Incomplete Sentences Blank: Examining Potential Race Differences

The Rotter Incomplete Sentences Blank (RISB; Rotter, Lah, & Rafferty, 1992; Rotter & Rafferty, 1950) was administered to African American (n = 94) and White (n = 100) members of fraternal organizations at a large Midwestern university to explore possible influences of racial group and socially desirable response tendencies. The RISB protocols were reliably scored (interrater agreement = 92%) by 3 independent scorers blind to participant racial membership. The mean scores of the 2 racial groups were not significantly different (p > .05). However, using the traditional categorical placement scores resulted in a disproportionate assignment rate for African American scores to the maladjusted group than would be anticipated by mere chance.

Adolescents' Perceptions of Peer Acceptance: is Dysphoria Associated With Greater Realism?

This study assessed bias of adolescents' perceptions of their peer acceptance in order to test the depressive realism hypothesis. High school students (n = 289; 50.5% male; 21.5% minority) completed a depression inventory and predicted acceptance ratings they expected to receive from peers. The difference between mean expected and received peer acceptance ratings was used to measure perceptual bias. Dysphoria was associated with less (positively) biased perceptions of peer acceptance for girls, a finding that held even after controlling for socially desirable response tendencies. Positive bias was not characteristic of most nondysphoric adolescents, but only of a subgroup who endorsed very few items on the depression inventory. These findings challenge that the view positive biases are characteristic of normal thought and that dysphoric individuals are deficient in a protective, self-enhancing bias.

Socially desirable responding and self‐reported HIV infection risk behaviors among intravenous drug users

This study examined the extent to which self-report of human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) risk behaviors might depend upon socially desirable response tendencies, and whether socially desirable responding might serve as a confounding variable in the study of risk behaviors and HIV serostatus. The subjects were 2885 intravenous drug users participating in the ALIVE study in Baltimore, Maryland. Participants completed an interview and were tested for HIV serostatus. The interview covered HIV risk behaviors, and included established scales to measure 'self-deception' and 'impression management', two separate dimensions of socially desirable responding. Seven items for each scale were scored true/false, with a summary score used for analysis. Scores on self-deception and impression management were inversely related to self-reports of sharing injection equipment, injecting at shooting galleries, and injecting more than once a day. Neither self-deception nor impression management was associated with cocaine use. Self-reported receptive anal intercourse was associated inversely with self-deception but not with impression management. HIV serostatus was not associated with social desirability, and statistically controlling for social desirability had a negligible impact on the magnitude of associations between risk behaviors and HIV serostatus. The results indicate that measures of social desirability may be used to ascertain sensitive areas of inquiry in interviews of intravenous drug users.

Social desirability response tendencies in psychiatric inpatient children.

This study examined the substantive features of children's social desirability (SD) tendencies that could influence the nature and severity of psychopathology. Examinations of substantive features of SD responding in an inpatient child psychiatry unit (N = 76) suggested that higher scores on the Children's Social Desirability questionnaire were associated strongly with (1) lower mental age; (2) higher scores on self-reported social competence; (3) lower scores on self-reported anger; and (4) lower scores on parent-reported externalization behavioral disturbance. Results were interpreted as suggesting that SD responding for child inpatients may reflect a mixed picture of negative features of cognitive and social immaturity that could affect adversely their ability to judge their own and others' social behavior and of positive features of less external behavioral disturbance and more prosocial attitudes and behaviors.

A Revised Measure of Approval Motivation and Its Relationship to Social Desirability

Existing measures of approval motivation attempt to assess this dimension of personality indirectly through evaluation of socially desirable response tendencies. The Martin-Larsen Approval Motivation (MLAM) Scale takes a more direct approach by focusing on individual differences in need for social approval. Since the original version of the MLAM scale is subject to acquiescence response bias, fully balanced and partially balanced scales were created to minimize this response style. Results indicated that the revised measures arc equivalent to the original version and that balancing affects the magnitude but not the pattern of correlates with other scales. Comparisons with the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability (MCSD) Scale revealed a divergent pattern of correlates with several measures of personality suggesting a basic difference between the MLAM and MCSD in their conceptualization of approval motivation.

Attribution, gender orientation, and adaptability: Reconceptualization, measurement, and research results

Within the framework of attribution theory, this study reconceptualized gender orientation and androgyny. The relationships among gender measurement, androgyny, and adaptability were examined with improved measurement procedures. Socially desirable response tendencies were found for self‐attribution of femininity and androgyny but not for adaptability, nor for gender attributions or androgyny of others. A new scoring procedure producing a single continuous androgyny variable was also developed and tested. Meaningful relationships between this androgyny measure, gender orientation, and adaptability were observed. The central hypothesis tested the relationship between perceptions of stable, dispositional factors and behavioral attributions. Findings were consistent with the predictions provided by attribution theory.