Personality, situation, and positive–negative asymmetry in socially desirable responding

1995 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 125-134 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marjaana Lindeman ◽  
Markku Verkasalo

Based on previous research on socially desirable responding and positive—negative asymmetry, we hypothesized that (i) impression management is higher in public than in private settings, (ii) personal ideals linked to exemplification, ingratiation, and intimidation are related to an impression management tendency, (iii) negatively keyed social desirability items receive more extreme responses than positively keyed items, and (iv) self‐esteem is correlated higher with negatively than with positively keyed self‐deception items. Based on Jones and Pittman's (1982) model, exemplification, ingratiation, and intimidation are defined as impression management strategies that aim at presenting oneself as worthy, likable, or dangerous, respectively. Principally, the results obtained in a public setting (N=177) and a private setting (N= 165) support these hypotheses. The overall pattern of findings suggests that both context and personal ideals exert an influence on impression management scores, and that the keying direction of an item may be an important psychological determinant of a test response.

2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 155-168
Author(s):  
Roberta Biolcati

Background: Self-esteem is a critical factor in online impression management strategies and could play a crucial role in explaining women’s selfie-posting behaviours. Previous works examining relationships between self-esteem and self-presentation on social media have yielded controversial results. Objective: This study was performed to clarify the relationship between self-esteem and the frequency of taking and posting own, group and partner selfies on Social Networking Sites (SNS). Methods: A sample of 692 Italian young women (18-28 years old) completed questionnaires on self-esteem, satisfaction with life, body satisfaction and selfie posting bahaviours. The low self-esteem group was compared with the high self-esteem group. Results: Results showed that women with low self-esteem are more dissatisfied with their body image and life and significantly they post fewer types of selfies compared to women with high self-esteem. Conclusion: Findings from this study provide new insights into the relation between self-esteem and selfie impression management strategies.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (10) ◽  
pp. 278
Author(s):  
Lajunen ◽  
Gaygısız

A large number of studies in health psychology have shown that sense of coherence (SOC) is an essential factor in wellbeing and health. SOC is most commonly measured with the Antonovsky’s Orientation to Life Questionnaire (OLQ), which has been so far translated into at least 48 languages. Despite the vast popularity of the OLQ, the relationships between OLQ and socially desirable responding (impression management and self-deception) have not been studied. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the correlations between social desirability and Antonovsky’s OLQ. Method: The first sample consisted of 423 students who completed the 13-item OLQ and the Eysenck Personality Questionnaire (EPQ), including the Lie scale. Also, the Balanced Inventory for Desirable Responding by Paulhus was administered together with the OLQ to 202 students. Results: SOC correlated positively with measures of social desirability among men but not among women. Hence, sex moderated the relationship between socially desirable responding and sense of coherence. Conclusions: Socially desirable responding and, especially, self-deception are positively related to high scores in SOC among men but not among women. The OLQ as a measure of sense of coherence can be used among women without worrying about the bias caused by socially desirable responding. When using the OLQ among men, the strong relationship between self-deception and sense of coherence should be taken into account.


1994 ◽  
Vol 8 (5) ◽  
pp. 385-393 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markku Verkasalo ◽  
Marjaana Lindeman

The effect of personal ideals on socially desirable responding (impression management or IM, and self‐deception or SDE) was examined in a study of 428 undergraduate students. The subjects indicated their endorsement of 56 values and filled in Paulhus's (1991) Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding. Three IM types, viz. ingratiators, exemplificators, and intimidators, were defined from the subjects’ personal ideals. We hypothesized that both ingratiators and exemplificators score high and that intimidators score low on IM items. These hypotheses were confirmed, but the result for intimidators was only marginally reliable. Furthermore, it turned out that high IM scorers strove for collective values but high SDE scorers strove for individual values. The results are discussed as an expression of a self‐construction process, which is based on personal, rather than social, ideals. In addition, the implications of the results for controlling the effect of socially desirable responding are discussed.


2011 ◽  
Vol 26 (S2) ◽  
pp. 1175-1175 ◽  
Author(s):  
M.C. Fastame ◽  
M.P. Penna ◽  
B. Leone ◽  
C. Puddu

Ageing is part of a continuum which is characterized by developmental and emotional changes as well as cognitive losses and gains. There is evidence that the perception of life quality in the elders is influenced by the level of efficiency of cognitive functions and personal beliefs on the senescence (e.g., De Beni, 2009). Indeed, when the early cognitive decline is negatively perceived, the late adults tend to show low self-esteem, social retirement, depression, low general life satisfaction. Overall, in geriatric studies scales designed to detect subjective psychological well-being are usually administrated ignoring the disturbing effect of several factors, such as the socially desirable responding, a construct referring to the attitude to project favorable images of themselves on questionnaires or during social interaction (e.g., Knauper et al., 2004). The present study was aimed to investigate whether social desirability is related to several measures of memory and metacognitive efficiencies. Forty-eight young (i.e., 20–30 years old) and old (i.e., 65–74 years aged) participants recruited in Ogliastra (e.g., an area in Sardinia known for the high prevalence of centenarians) were individually administrated a battery of tests including the Italian version of the Crowne-Marlowe Social Desirability Scale (Saggino and Perfetti, 2003) together with a measure of subjective mnestic efficiency for daily life facts (Questionnaire on Cognitive Failures, De Beni et al., 2008) and a self-report memory beliefs questionnaire (Cornoldi and De Beni, 2003). The results show that the measurement of the perceived mnestic and metacognitive efficiencies are susceptible to socially desirable responding.


2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nejc Berzelak ◽  
Vasja Vehovar

This paper elaborates upon differences in socially desirable responding as being the result of mode effects between web, telephone, and face-to-face survey modes. Social desirability is one of the main threats to comparability of data between different modes. The paper conceptualises socially desirable responding as a specific type of mode effect, which is not only a result of inherent characteristics of a survey mode, but is also mediated and moderated by complex interdependencies of specific survey implementations, contextual factors, and characteristics and behaviours of respondents. While web surveys are generally less prone to socially desirable responding, it is essential to be wary of circumstances that may reduce the perceived privacy of the survey situation and lead to biased reporting. The presented empirical study analyses the answers to a large number of items used in a pilot implementation of the Generations and Gender Survey across the three modes to gain insights into the incidence of socially desirable responding and its role in the observed differences in estimates. The comparison of means, distributions, and proportions of extreme responses to scale questions is performed across 89 survey items. The results are in line with the previous findings on lower susceptibility of web surveys to social desirability bias. More importantly, the findings suggest that the problem of socially desirable responding is likely to be a major contributor to the differences in mean estimates, response distributions, and the level of extreme responding between the studied modes.


1968 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 985-988 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henry A. Alker

Coping and defensive behaviors, assessed by intensive interviews, covary, respectively, with the presence of socially desirable and socially undesirable inventory responses. Minimizing the influence of the social desirability variable consequently interferes with the strategic capacity of inventory items to index coping and defense. Furthermore, using low social-desirability scale value items most effectively discriminates between genuine and defensively distorted inventory responses. Neutral items are less efficient in this connection even though they minimize socially desirable responding.


2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 299-319 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Dana Lynn ◽  
Jason Joseph Paris ◽  
Cheryl Anne Frye ◽  
Lawrence M. Schell

Religious-commitment signaling is thought to indicate willingness to cooperate with a religious group. It follows that a desire to signal affiliation and reap concomitant benefits would lend itself to acting in socially desirable ways. Success or failure in such areas, especially where there is conscious intent, should correspond to proximal indicators of well-being, such as psychosocial or biological stress. To test this model, we assessed religious-commitment signaling and socially desirable responding among a sample of Pentecostals with respect to salivary biomarkers of stress and arousal. Results indicate that cortisol levels on worship and non-worship days were significantly influenced by religious-commitment signaling when moderated by impression management, a conscious form of socially desirable responding. No significant influences on salivary alpha-amylase were detected. These findings are important for understanding how religious-commitment signaling mechanisms may influence stress response when moderated by socially desirable responding and the role of communal orientation to psychosocial health.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document