The purposes of the present study were to investigate the two constructs of social desirability (self-deceptive enhancement and impression management), to confirm the two-tier system of social desirability that have been proposed by Paulhus(2002), and...
The purposes of the present study were to investigate the two constructs of social desirability (self-deceptive enhancement and impression management), to confirm the two-tier system of social desirability that have been proposed by Paulhus(2002), and to know the relation between two factors of social desirability and five factors of Big-Five Personality Inventory (extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability and openness). To achieve these goals, literatures, such as response distortion in self-report inventory and construct changes of social desirability, were reviewed in the first step. After that, Paulhus(1998)' BIDR-7 (The Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding-7) was chosen and was back translated considering Korean culture. This was composed of 40 items which were 5-point scales and a balanced inventory including both positive and negative statements. This study is based on the questionnaires of 239 male and 113 female undergraduate students.
Although the result of factor analyses supported the two-factor model of social desirability, social desirability scale was modified, 10 items for each factor, excluding the influences of implicit negation and explicit negation. The results of confirmatory factor analysis using AMOS confirmed that both constructs, self-deceptive enhancement and impression management, were correlated. The results from item quality analysis via MULTILOG was that the items had resonable discrimination and location indices. After these procedures, two constructs, self-deceptive denial and agency management, were added and discrimination of each pair in the four scales was obtained from the correlation of these. In addition, the correlation between the two-factor of social desirability and the five-factor of personality inventory showed that self-deceptive enhancement was positively correlated with extroversion and conscientiousness, while impression management was with agreeableness and conscientiousness. On the other hand, emotional stability was negatively correlated with self-deceptive enhancement and impression management. Furthermore, it turned out that agreeableness and openness reveal discrimination on two-factor of social desirability. As a result, Paulhus' two-tier system of social desirability which is related to personality inventory was supported.
In the final step, the limitation of this study and suggestions for following studies were discussed.