A reassessment of social desirability

Social desirability reflects the tendency of individuals to present themselves favorably, or in a desirable light, with respect to social norms and standards. The Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale is perhaps the best known index of socially desirable responding (SDR), but it has proven to be a dual measure of social desirability and the approval-dependent personality. Paulhus's Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (BIDR) sought to improve upon the BIDR by representing SDR as a dual component construct. Specifically, the BIDR measures two facets of social desirability: self-deception, underlying, overly positive, unconscious self-images and impression management, self-presentation to create a positive social image. Despite the various conceptualizations of socially desirable responding (e.g., lying, faking good, need for approval), no extant SDR scale includes the conception of deliberate deception which can be defined as a purposeful misrepresentation of the self aimed at external gain. The Item Response Inventory (IRI) was designed to measure three facets of social desirability: self-deceptive positivity, impression management, and deliberate deception. Study 1 assessed the psychometric properties (e g., internal reliability) of the IRI. Both IRI subscales and combined scores were found to be reliable (e.g., for combined scores Coefficient alpha = 0.81 and mean inter-item correlation = 0.14). Study 2 explored the convergent and discriminant validity of the revised IRI by comparing the IRI with extant measures of social desirability and other conceptually-related measures. Mixed results were found regarding the utility of including deliberate deception into the broader conceptualization of SDR.