A new scale of social desirability independent of psychopathology.

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 (Cronbach, 1946,1950), and ratings of the social desirability of personality test items (Edwards, 19 5 7). A further distinction can be made, however, which results in a somewhat different division of approaches to the question of response distortion. Common to both the Meehl and Hathaway corrections for faking good and faking bad and Cronbach's notion of response sets is an interest in the test behavior of the subject(S). By social desirability, on the other hand, Edwards primarily means the "scale value for any personality statement such that the scale value indicates the position of the statement on the social desirability continuum . . ." (1957, p. 3). Social desirability, thus, has been used to refer to a characteristic of test items, i.e., their scale position on a social desirability scale. Whether the test behavior of 5s or the social desirability properties of items are the focus of interest, however, it now seems clear that underlying both these approaches is the concept of statistical deviance. In the construction of the MMPI K scale, for example, items were selected which differentiated between clinically normal persons producing abnormal te¥Tpfpfiles~snd^cTinically abnormal individuals with abnormal test profiles, and between clinically abnormal persons with normal test profiles and abnormal 5s whose test records were abnormal. Keyed responses to the K scale items tend to be statistically deviant in the parent populations. Similarly, the development of the Edwards Social Desirability Scale (SDS) illustrates this procedure. Items were drawn from various MMPI scales (F, L, K, and the Manifest Anxiety Scale [Taylor, 1953]) and submitted to judges who categorized them as either socially desirable or socially undesirable. Only items on which there was unanimous agreement among the 10 judges were included in the SDS. It seems clear that the items in Edwards SDS would, of necessity, have extreme social desirability scale positions or, in other words, be statistically deviant. Some unfortunate consequences follow from the strict use of the statistical deviance model in the development of-sOcialTtesirSbTBty scales. With items drawn from the MMPI, it is apparent that in addition to their scalability for social desirability the items may also be characterized by their content which,^n a general sense, has pathological implications. When a social desrrabtltty^scale constructed according to this procedure is then applied to a college student population, the meaning of high social desirability scores is not at all clear. When 5s given the Edwards SDS deny, for example, that their sleep is fitful and disturbed (Item 6) or that they worry quite a bit over possible misfortunes (Item 35), it cannot be determined whether these responses are attributable to social desirability or to a genuine absence of such symptoms. The probability of occurrence of the symptoms represented in MMPI items (and incorportated in the SDS)