It may not be the Answer, it may be the Question

Abstract

Older people tend to give more favorable responses to questions about life circumstances than seems warranted by objective conditions, and it is important to find out why. This study looks at the effects of different question-and-answer formats, with particular interest in the involvement of psychological defense. The responses of two samples of Californians 60 and older indicate that positive response bias is related to format, being least in description of reality and most when reference is to the respondent's ability to cope with that reality. The data indicate that a much-used question-and-response format elicits responses more like those of the latter than of the former, suggesting that many surveys elicit self-defensive rather than reality-descriptive responses.