A new scale of social desirability independent of psychopathology.

Abstract

It has long been recognized that personality test scores are influenced by non-test-relevant response determinants. Wiggins and Rumrill (1959) distinguish three approaches to this problem. Briefly, interest in the problem of response distortion has been concerned with attempts at statistical correction for "faking good " or "faking bad " (Meehl & Hathaway, 1946), the analysis of response sets (Cron-bach, 1946,1950), and ratings of the social de-sirability of personality test items (Edwards, 19 5 7). A further distinction can be made, how-ever, which results in a somewhat different division of approaches to the question of re-sponse distortion. Common to both the Meehl