Measurement And Social Desirability Response Bias In Experimental Vignette Research: A Test Of Fazio's Mode Theory (Preprint)

BACKGROUND Experimental vignette research methods have been used to study a diverse range of theoretical and practical issues. Vignettes are designed to create hypothetical cultural/normative contexts for the study of variation in self-reported attitudes. A key problem in such research, however, is potential social desirability response bias. OBJECTIVE The objective of the present experiment is to test an explicit theory explaining such bias. METHODS A vignette experimental test of an hypothesis derived from a dual-process theory (the MODE framework initially developed by Fazio) linking explicit vs. implicit self-reported attitude measurement and social desirability response bias is reported here. RESULTS The data show that measuring the social approval of a central vignette character explicitly results in greater social desirability responding than measuring such approval implicitly, supporting MODE theory. CONCLUSIONS Vignette research methodologies provide a rich, flexible toolkit for studying many important social psychological topics, including issues of inequality and equity. However, researchers can and should design a measurement strategy that carefully manages inferences drawn in light of conditions likely to produce social desirability response bias