The assessment of effects of partialling out of socially desirable responding variance on personality traits scores in instructed applicant situations

Abstract

The aim of this study was to examine the extent to which the socially desirable responding (SDR) distorts results of HEDONICA personaliy inventory (acronim based on eight dimensions of this inventory: Honesty, Disintegration, Impulsiveness, Openness, Extraversion, Neuroticism, Conscientiousness, and Agreeableness). The inventory HEDONICA was merged with components of the Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (BIDR) as a control inventory and was administered to a sample of 227 students under two experimental situations/ contexts, operationalized by two instructions: the standard (S) one (such as ?be honest?) and the ?fake good? (FG) one (such as ?portray yourself in a most positive way?). Comparing scores in S and FG situations by using MANOVA, a clear distortion on all personality traits in socially desirable directions were evidenced. When, however, the BIDR subscales in the FG situation were entered into MANOVA as covariates, differences between personality scores in S and FG sitautions were considerably reduced, and became statistically insignificant on five personality dimensions. When the variance of dimensions of the BIDR inventory was removed from the variance of HEDONICA traits in FG situation, the change between intercorrelations of personality dimensions in S and FG situations did not attain statistical significance. This lead to the conclusion that the SDR bias, if even does affect test results (i.e., enhances scores in FG situation), does not affect the scale structure and predictive validity of the examined personality inventory.