A Validation of the Crowne-marlowe Social Desirability Scale

1. Introduction Social desirability is commonly thought of as the tendency of individuals to project favorable images of themselves during social interaction. Numerous measures of the tendency to respond in a socially desirable manner have been developed since World War II (Paulhus, 1991). One of the most commonly employed scales has been the Crowne-Marlowe (CM) Social Desirability, or Need for Approval, Scale (Crowne and Marlowe, 1960). As originally developed, this measure contains 33 true-false items that describe both acceptable but improbable behaviors, as well as those deemed unacceptable but probable. Perhaps as a consequence of the attention it has received, questions have been raised about the nature of the CM and how it functions. What we refer to as the classic social desirability interpretation suggests that the tendency to report information that is colored by social desirability concerns is best conceptualized as a personality trait which can be measured via the CM scale. A contrasting perspective, which we label the true-behavior interpretation, suggests instead that the CM reliably measures actual respondent behaviors and attitudes, rather than a propensity to edit self-reports. These competing interpretations are reviewed below.