Controlling social desirability may attenuate faking effects: a study with aggression measures.

BACKGROUND Several studies have been conducted to better understand what happens with personality scores when faking occurs, but very few use socially undesirable trait measures such as aggression. The aim of the present research is twofold: (a) we aim to apply a General Factorial-Analytic procedure to aggression scales and determine whether it can correct for faking effects; (b) we aim to test the impact that individual differences can have on change scores due to faking. METHOD Participants were 371 undergraduate students. Of these, 215 answered the questionnaires twice, under neutral conditions and under faking-motivating conditions. 156 were the control group who answered the questionnaires twice, both times under neutral conditions. RESULTS The mean comparison tests as well as the repeated measures ANOVA showed significant results. Individual differences played an important role in all the scales except in physical aggression. CONCLUSIONS The results showed that the procedure does correct for faking effects and that individual differences have an important impact on the change scores due to faking, except in the most undesirable Physical aggression measure, which was hardly affected.