Higher Social Desirability Scores Research Articles

The disturbed violent offender : by Hans Toch and Kenneth Adams Yale University Press (92A Yale Station, New Haven, Connecticut 06520), 1989, 183 pp., hardcover—$22.50

Objectives: To investigate differences and similarities between violent offenders and two types of sex offenders, rapists and child molesters, in terms of their personality, the nature of the victim, the role of alcohol, and their confession to their crime.Method: Thirty-six adult sex offenders, 23 child molesters, and 32 violent offenders were compared on personality measures, their relationship with the victim, the presence of alcohol intoxication, their confession rate and retraction at trial, and the reasons they gave for having confessed to the police.Results: Child molesters and adult sex offenders (rapists) were significantly more introverted than the violent offenders. The child molesters had higher social desirability scores than the other groups, they tended to assault relatives and friends, they were rarely intoxicated while committing the offense, and they had strong internal need to confess to the police. Rapists and violent offenders were more commonly intoxicated during the commission of the offense; the former tended to assault acquaintances, where violent offenders most commonly assaulted strangers. Exactly half of the rapists retracted their confession when the case went to trial; in contrast none of the other offenders retracted their confession.Conclusions: The results show that there are significant differences as well as similarities between the three groups of offenders, which have implications for assessment and treatment.

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.

A new scale of social desirability independent of psychopathology.

It has long been recognized that personality test scores are influenced by non-test-relevant response determinants. Wiggins and Rumrill (1959) distinguish three approaches to this problem. Briefly, interest in the problem of response distortion has been concerned with attempts at statistical correction for or (Meehl & Hathaway, 1946), the analysis of response sets (Cronbach, 1946,1950), and ratings of the social desirability of personality test items (Edwards, 19 5 7). A further distinction can be made, however, which results in a somewhat different division of approaches to the question of response distortion. Common to both the Meehl and Hathaway corrections for faking good and faking bad and Cronbach's notion of response sets is an interest in the test behavior of the subject(S). By social desirability, on the other hand, Edwards primarily means the value for any personality statement such that the scale value indicates the position of the statement on the social desirability continuum . (1957, p. 3). Social desirability, thus, has been used to refer to a characteristic of test items, i.e., their scale position on a social desirability scale. Whether the test behavior of 5s or the social desirability properties of items are the focus of interest, however, it now seems clear that underlying both these approaches is the concept of statistical deviance. In the construction of the MMPI K scale, for example, items were selected which differentiated between clinically normal persons producing abnormal te¥Tpfpfiles~snd^cTinically abnormal individuals with abnormal test profiles, and between clinically abnormal persons with normal test profiles and abnormal 5s whose test records were abnormal. Keyed responses to the K scale items tend to be statistically deviant in the parent populations. Similarly, the development of the Edwards Social Desirability Scale (SDS) illustrates this procedure. Items were drawn from various MMPI scales (F, L, K, and the Manifest Anxiety Scale [Taylor, 1953]) and submitted to judges who categorized them as either socially desirable or socially undesirable. Only items on which there was unanimous agreement among the 10 judges were included in the SDS. It seems clear that the items in Edwards SDS would, of necessity, have extreme social desirability scale positions or, in other words, be statistically deviant. Some unfortunate consequences follow from the strict use of the statistical deviance model in the development of-sOcialTtesirSbTBty scales. With items drawn from the MMPI, it is apparent that in addition to their scalability for social desirability the items may also be characterized by their content which,^n a general sense, has pathological implications. When a social desrrabtltty^scale constructed according to this procedure is then applied to a college student population, the meaning of high social desirability scores is not at all clear. When 5s given the Edwards SDS deny, for example, that their sleep is fitful and disturbed (Item 6) or that they worry quite a bit over possible misfortunes (Item 35), it cannot be determined whether these responses are attributable to social desirability or to a genuine absence of such symptoms. The probability of occurrence of the symptoms represented in MMPI items (and incorportated in the SDS)