No Initial Elevation on Personality Self-Reports in an Online Convenience Sample

Abstract

Research shows that people’s self-reports may be biased by an initial elevation phenomenon in which ratings are higher the first time that people take a survey as compared to the second and subsequent times. Apart from the fact that this phenomenon exists, and that it might bias ratings for negative subjective experiences more strongly than positive ones, little else is known. In the present study, we examined whether the initial elevation phenomenon occurs for commonly used trait measures, such as ratings on personality inventories and life satisfaction. We hypothesized that the initial elevation phenomenon may be associated with the (un)desirability of the content of the self-report items such that scores for undesirable facets would show initial elevation and scores for desirable facets would show the reverse. We tested this in an online convenience sample (N = 3,329) using 5 facets of a personality inventory and a single item measure of life satisfaction. Our hypotheses were not supported. Our findings suggest that at least for online convenience samples, ratings on personality inventories and life satisfaction are not strongly impacted by initial elevation.