The Relationship between Social Desirability and Visual Evoked Potentials: Implications for Personality Measurement

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe main aim of this research was to explore the biological bases of social desirability with possible implications for future personality measurement. Fifty four female psychology students (Mage = 20 years) participated in the research. Social desirability was measured with Eysenck's Personality Questionnaire - Revised version (Eysenck, Eysenck & Barrett, 1985). The evoked brain potentials (N1, P2, N2, P3 & SW) were elicited by a standard visual oddball paradigm, in two measuring trials for each subject, using two occipital and two parietal electrodes. The results revealed a positive correlation between subjects' results on the social desirability subscale and visual N2-P3-Sw-latency on occipital and parietal electrodes. These findings confirmed earlier research results about prolonged EP-latencies during information processing in giving more socially desirable answers during self-rating at personality questionnaires. Consequently, current findings generate possible implications for improving personality assessment methodology.KEYWORDS: event-related potentials, social desirability, students, personality assessment, implicationsINTRODUCTIONSocial desirability is defined as humans' tendency to present themselves as good individuals, which is especially pronounced in highly desirable situations (Eysenck & Eysenck, 1994). As it was elaborated within Eysenck's personality theory (1967) this characteristic reflects a stable personality factor that indicates the extent of a person's social conformity. Therefore, in this study social desirability and social conformism are used as equivalent. Besides the definition of social conformity as a stable personality characteristic, it has also been characterized as a major difficulty when it comes to predicting outcomes in high-stakes situations. Specifically, social conformity also reflects individuals' potential to fake their responses in self-rated personality questionnaires (Mesmer-Magnus, Vieswesvaran, Deshpande, & Joseph, 2006). Consequently, when trying to measure it, participants' tendency to conform could result in various methodological problems. Therefore, it can have two facets: as a stable personality trait and as a form of dissimulation. Although one could say that it is more than useful to investigate the electrophysiology of social desirability as personality trait, it is even more valuable to use these findings as a possible solution to deal with dissimulation effects in personality measurement.The theoretical and empirical framework of the relation between social desirability and personality assessment improvement is not novel and it represents a main focus in previous studies (e.g., Paulhus, 1984; Holtgrawes, 2004; Kulas & Stackhowski, 2012; Mentus & Opacic, 2013). All studies ask the major question: Does lying on personality questionnaires take time?. In the contemporary literature, there are three theoretical models that have the potential to provide the answer to the previous question. The first model, the Response editing model (Holtgraves, 2004), emphasizes that lying takes time, while the second one, the Response Reflection model (Kulas & Stackhowski, 2012) emphasizes that actually giving an honest answer takes more time. The most recent model is an Interactive model, which states that time for answering on the personality questionnaire depends on the individuals' cognitive schema (Mentus & Opacic, 2013). If individuals' answers on specific questions or tasks are in accordance with that schema, the answering time is shorter, and vice versa. Some studies have confirmed this interactive model (e.g., Mentus & Opacic, 2013), yet these studies did not take into consideration the biological bases of social desirability and its relationship to the response latencies of evoked potentials (EP) in order to determine all relevant factors of social desirable answering in personality measurement. …

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