Substance versus style: a new look at social desirability in motivating contexts.

J Appl Psychol

Jess H. Jones Graduate School of Management and Department of Psychology, Rice University, Houston, Texas 77005, USA.

Published: April 2002

AI Article Synopsis

  • There is a growing agreement that social desirability doesn't significantly affect the criterion-related validity of personality assessments.
  • Some researchers argue that social desirability negatively impacts the construct validity of these measures, often using exaggerated "fake-good" conditions in their studies.
  • New research shows that, in real-world situations like job applications, response distortion does not significantly harm the construct validity of personality tests.

Article Abstract

Although there is an emerging consensus that social desirability does not meaningfully affect criterion-related validity, several researchers have reaffirmed the argument that social desirability degrades the construct validity of personality measures. Yet, most research demonstrating the adverse consequences of faking for construct validity uses a fake-good instruction set. The consequence of such a manipulation is to exacerbate the effects of response distortion beyond what would be expected under realistic circumstances (e.g., an applicant setting). The research reported in this article was designed to assess these issues by using real-world contexts not influenced by artificial instructions. Results suggest that response distortion has little impact on the construct validity of personality measures used in selection contexts.

Download full-text PDF

Source
http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.87.2.211DOI Listing

Publication Analysis

Top Keywords

social desirability
12
construct validity
12
validity personality
8
personality measures
8
response distortion
8
substance versus
4
versus style
4
style social
4
desirability motivating
4
motivating contexts
4

Similar Publications

The Relationships Between Multidimensional Schizotypy and Metacognitive Beliefs.

Psychol Rep

January 2025

School of Psychology, Faculty of Society and Design, Bond University, Gold Coast, QLD, Australia.

There has been a recent surge in schizotypy and metacognition research. Metacognition is an umbrella term for higher-order thought processes. Here, we focussed on maladaptive metacognitive beliefs, which are beliefs related to one's thought processes and often play an important role in the preponderance of psychological disorders.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Effect of the thinking healthy programme-based internet intervention model for maternal perinatal depression: A pilot study.

J Affect Disord

January 2025

Center for Women's and Children's Health, Wuhan University School of Nursing, Wuhan University, 115 Donghu Road, Wuhan 430071, Hubei, China. Electronic address:

Background: Thinking Healthy Programme (THP) is an evidence-based psychosocial intervention that can be delivered by non-psychologists and does not require the implementer to have a mental health background or field experience. The THP has been tested in maternal health in many countries. However, the application of the THP model in Chinese maternal and child health has not been reported.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: The previous literature concerned with understanding stigma affecting patients with bipolar disorder relies predominantly on qualitative and survey approaches, and rarely contends with the potential role of social desirability on disclosure. The current project employs a 2 × 2 experimental approach to establish the presence of stigmatizing attitudes in a context with real social consequences (i.e.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objective: The term 'research participation effects' (RPEs) is intended to capture features and artefacts of study design that may affect measured outcomes in ways that introduce bias into research findings, impacting inference and outcome validity. This systematic review aims to identify which RPEs have been studied in the context of alcohol research and provide an overview of estimates of RPEs on self-reported alcohol consumption.

Study Design And Setting: This systematic review summarises the available evidence on research participation effects in alcohol research.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Organizational readiness for implementation: a qualitative assessment to explain survey responses.

BMC Health Serv Res

January 2025

Center for Health Promotion and Prevention Research, School of Public Health, UT Health Houston, Houston, TX, USA.

Background: One factor considered essential to successful implementation is organizational readiness. The purpose of this study was to explore ways to improve the measurement of organizational readiness, and in particular to refine a preliminary measure based on the Readiness = Motivation x innovation Specific Capacity x General Capacity (R = MC2) heuristic. We assessed the experiences of staff in Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHC) implementing evidence-based interventions (EBIs) designed to increase colorectal cancer screening (CRCS) who previously completed the survey and aimed to understand their perspectives on why our data were positively skewed.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?

Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!