Controlling for Response Bias in Self-Ratings of Personality: A Comparison of Impression Management Scales and the Overclaiming Technique

Abstract

Self-serving response distortions pose a threat to the validity of personality scales. A common approach to deal with this issue is to rely on impression management (IM) scales. More recently, the overclaiming technique (OCT) has been proposed as an alternative and arguably superior measure of such biases. In this study (N = 162), we tested these approaches in the context of self- and other-ratings using the HEXACO personality inventory. To the extent that the OCT and IM scales can be considered valid measures of response distortions, they are expected to account for inflated self-ratings in particular for those personality dimensions that are prone to socially desirable responding. However, the results show that neither the OCT nor IM account for overly favorable self-ratings. The validity of IM as a measure of response biases was further scrutinized by a substantial correlation with other-rated honesty-humility. As such, this study questions the use of both the OCT and IM to assess self-serving response distortions.

Objections to the HEXACO Model of Personality Structure—and why those Objections Fail

“…Instead, in considerable part, they measure how well behaved a person really is, as indicated by the fact that self‐reports on Impression Management scales correlate positively (i) with observer reports on those same scales (and also on Honesty‐Humility and Conscientiousness) and (ii) with a directly observed measure of ethical behaviour (i.e. refraining from cheating even when cheating would not be detected)—see De Vries, Zettler, and Hilbig (), Zettler, Hilbig, Moshagen, and De Vries (), De Vries et al (), and Müller and Moshagen (, ).…”

Testing competing claims about overclaiming

“…This relationship makes sense, because describing oneself (deliberately) in a more positive manner should correspond to being less honest and less humble. The same logic can be applied to the association of overclaiming with honestyhumility, although recent evidence shows no relation between different indices of overclaiming and honesty-humility (OC bias: Dunlop et al, 2019;Müller & Moshagen, 2019; mean familiarity ratings of foils: Steger et al, 2020), thus suggesting overclaiming corresponds to unintentionally overrating one's abilities.…”

“…In line with this idea and given theoretical accounts of faking ability (e.g., Ziegler, 2011), it should be considered that the setting in which an OCQ is administered (low-stakes vs. high-stakes) might play an important role for the validity of overclaiming as a potential marker of deliberate positive self-representations such as faking (Dunlop et al, 2019). More precisely, the evidence that the OC bias index is predictive of faking in low-stakes settings is rather weak (Dunlop et al, 2019;Feeney & Goffin, 2015;Ludeke & Makransky, 2016;Müller & Moshagen, 2019), higher in high-stakes setting (e.g., Bing et al, 2011; al., 2019), but still not ubiquitous (Bensch et al, 2019).…”

Technology-Based Assessment: A Theoretical Framework, Psychometric Modeling, and Substantial Issues in the Assessment of Cognitive Abilities

“…Although honesty-humility seemed to be a promising candidate for predicting cheating, we found honesty to be unrelated not only to cheating, but also to every other covariate of the study. At least for the missing link with overclaiming, these results are not surprising, given that previous studies also failed to establish a relation between honesty-humility and overclaiming (Dunlop et al, 2017;Müller & Moshagen, 2019a, 2019b. In the same vein, overclaiming did not contribute substantially to predicting cheating-neither on a manifest nor on a latent level.…”

“…to improve the validity of psychological assessment ; but see also Müller & Moshagen, 2019a, 2019b. In practical terms, one might expect people who consciously lie about their knowledge to also boost their test scores by engaging in cheating behaviors, just as one would expect this behavior from people with high self-interest scores (a facet of the dark personality, see also Moshagen, Hilbig, & Zettler, 2018).…”