CHAPTER
2
Response Bias, Malingering, and
Impression Management
Edward Helmes1, Ronald R. Holden2and Matthias Ziegler3
1James Cook University, Townsville, Queensland, Australia;2Queen’s University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada;
3Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany
RESPONSE BIASES AND SOCIALLY DESIRABLE RESPONDING
Motivational distortion and response bias (either intentional or unintentional) remain as important issues for
contemporary social-personality assessment ( Podsakoff, MacKenzie, & Podsakoff, 2012; Rogers, 2008; Ziegler,
MacCann, & Roberts, 2012 ). Attempts at correcting for motivational distortion and response bias, including
sophisticated mathematical modeling approaches (e.g., Cattell, 1967 ;Cattell & Johnson, 1986 ) have only been par-
tially successful. More recently, construction of fake-resistant measures using item response theory (IRT; Stark,
Chernyshenko, & Drasgow, 2012 ), and Bayesian detection methods ( Kuncel, Borneman, & Kiger, 2012 ) have
made further inroads in detecting and controlling motivational distortion, faking and response bias.
Although historically the issue of social desirability responding was raised by Edwards (1953) , debates over
the ensuing years have continued to argue selectively for interpretations based on style or substance ( Ba¨ckstro ¨m,
Bjorklund, & Larsson, 2012; Block, 1990; Borkenau & Ostendorf, 1992; Helmes, 2000; Holden & Passey, 2009,
2010; Jackson & Messick, 1958; Lonnqvist, Paunonen, Tuulio-Henriksson, Lonnqvist, & Verkasalo, 2007; Ones &
Viswesvaran, 1998; Paulhus, 2002 ). Despite the frequently partisan tone to aspects of the debate, to many who are
interested in the ongoing issues, the distinction originally made between self-deception and impression manage-
ment by Sackeim and Gur (1978) has proved to be useful. These constructs can be termed response styles, differ-
entiating between stable response tendencies that generalize across situations from response sets that may be
unique to particular assessment contexts. Here we do not cover response sets such as carelessness or acquies-
cence in completing psychological measures. Carelessness is usually dealt with by infrequency scales, and a vari-
ety of measures have been used to assess acquiescence or ‘yea or nay saying’, most of which tabulate response
patterns with some cutoff for excessive numbers of responses of one type. Although most consistently embodied
in the research of Paulhus (1984) through the Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (BIDR), the concept of
self-deception has taken on a theoretical and empirical life of its own (e.g., see von Hippel & Trivers, 2011 ).
Many problems remain unresolved. For example, Holden and Passey (2009) pointed out that many current mea-
sures of socially desirable responding do not coalesce and clearly do not assess a uniform construct. As a second
example, Paulhus (1986,1991) has long argued that self-deception largely constitutes overly favorable self-reports,
which appears to be a stable characteristic and one that is not necessarily amenable to conscious awareness. Arguing
for a content interpretation, Ones and Viswesvaran (1998) stated that social desirability is related to a variety of posi-
tive characteristics that are associated with aspects of actual job performance, but not others, and as such, it is likely
subject to conscious awareness. In addition, characteristics most valued in applied settings are not predicted by
socially desirable responding, an argument for the lack of generalized influence of this particular response style
(Ones, Viswesvaran, & Reiss, 1996 ). Such views can be contrasted with those that argue for the importance of social
desirability management as a confounding influence in several assessment contexts ( Holden, 2007 ).
16Measures of Personality and Social Psychological Constructs.
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-386915-9.00002-4 ©2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.