Impressions of Questionable Marketing Practices in Indonesia: The Influence of Gender and Social Desirability Response Bias

Our research examines the ethical sensitivity of 90 Indonesian business students (61 male and 29 female) toward questionable marketing practices using self-reported data; however, unlike most ethics research, we control for social desirability responsibility bias. In our research, we found that, when social desirability response bias was not considered, there was a significant gender difference. However, we also found that female students scored significantly higher on our measure of social desirability response bias than did their male counterparts. When we considered both gender and social desirability response bias in our models, the differences in ethical sensitivity between genders were mitigated. Consequently, it is our belief that social desirability response bias contaminates much of the self-reported data that is used in academic ethics research.