The Effects of Traited and Situational Impression Management on a Personality Test: An Empirical Analysis

Abstract

Studies examining impression management (IM) in self-report measures typically assume that impression management is either a 1) trait or 2) situational variable, which has led to often conflicting results (Stark, Chernyshenko, Chan, Lee and Drasgow. 2001). This study examined the item-level and scale-level responses on six empirically-derived facets of conscientiousness from the California Psychological Inventory (CPI) between high and low IM groups. Subjects (N = 6,220) were participants in a management assessment conducted by an external consulting firm. Subjects participated in the assessment as part of either 1) a selection or promotional process, or 2) a feedback and development process, and two specific occupational groups (sales/marketing and accounting/finance) were examined. Using the IRT-based DFIT framework (Raju, Van der Linden & Fleer, 1995), the item-level and scalelevel differences were examined for the situational IM and traited IM approaches. The results indicated that relatively little DIF/DTF was present and that the differences between the two approaches to examining IM may not be as great as previously suggested.

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