Not too little, but not too much: The perceived desirability of responses to personality items

0092-6566/$ see front matter 2011 Elsevier Inc. A doi:10.1016/j.jrp.2011.10.004 q An earlier version of this paper was presented at Industrial and Organizational Psychologists Conferenc ⇑ Corresponding author. Address: School of Psych Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, Western Aust 8 6488 1006. E-mail address: [email protected] (P.D. D Paradigms typically employed to investigate socially desirable responding in personality assessment implicitly assume linear relationships exist between trait level and desirability but recent research has called this assumption into question. In this study, participants rated the desirability of a hypothetical applicant to one of four jobs on the basis of which five-point Likert-type scale option he/she selected when responding to personality items. Results generally indicated that the most extreme option, on the desirable side of the response scale, was rated as most desirable, but perceived desirability asymptotes with the penultimate option. The middle (neutral) option, however, was consistently regarded as being much less desirable. The occupational context also significantly moderated the patterns of desirability ratings for many items. 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.