The Lazy or Dishonest Respondent: Detection and Prevention

Abstract

Self-report measures are characterized as being susceptible to threats associated with deliberate dissimulation or response distortion (i.e., social desirability responding) and careless responding. Careless responding typically arises in low-stakes settings (e.g., participating in a study for course credit) where some respondents are not motivated to respond in a conscientious manner to the items. In contrast, in high-stakes assessments (e.g., prehire assessments), because of the outcomes associated with their responses, respondents are motivated to present themselves in as favorable a light as possible and, thus, may respond dishonestly in an effort to accomplish this objective. In this article, we draw a distinction between the lazy respondent, which we associate with careless responding, and the dishonest respondent, which we associate with response distortion. We then seek to answer the following questions for both careless responding and response distortion: ( a) What is it? ( b) Why is it a problem or concern? ( c) Why do people engage in it? ( d) How pervasive is it? ( e) Can and how is it prevented or mitigated? ( f ) How is it detected? ( g) What does one do when one detects it? We conclude with a discussion of suggested future research directions and some practical guidelines for practitioners and researchers. Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Organizational Pscyhology and Organizational Behavior, Volume 8 is January 21, 2021. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.

Are social desirability scales desirable? A meta‐analytic test of the validity of social desirability scales in the context of prosocial behavior

“…Finally, the incentivized settings (games) included in our analysis represented low-stakes situations-asking participants to allocate relatively small amounts of money-rather than high-stakes situations, such as job applications or clinical assessments of patients. While some studies have argued that low-stakes situations are related to lower levels of SDR (e.g., Lönnqvist et al, 2007;Mesmer-Magnus et al, 2006), Arthur et al (2021) found in their review that SDR is prevalent in low-and high-stakes situations alike. In economic games in particular, the size of incentives seems to play a negligible role (e.g., Karagözoğlu…”

“…Even more so than in other fields, SD scales are prominently featured in psychology. For example, SD scales have been used in industrialorganizational psychology (e.g., Arthur et al, 2021), clinical psychology (Perinelli & Gremigni, 2016), social psychology (e.g., , neuropsychology (e.g., Rodrigues et al, 2015), and personality research (e.g., Liu & Liu, 2021).…”

Does the use of alternative predictor methods reduce subgroup differences? It depends on the construct

“…It is also noteworthy that in contrast to paper‐and‐pencil assessments of noncognitive constructs which are self‐reports, most of the alternative methods, specifically interviews, assessment centers, and work samples (when they entail constructed‐responses) are based on other‐reports. So, to the extent that self‐reports (paper‐and‐pencil) are susceptible to a positive inflation bias or even faking (Arthur, Hagen, & George, in press), a second plausible explanation might be that subgroup differences on self‐reports of noncognitive constructs are negated by these biases.…”

Testing the validity of a Latvian multidimensional forced-choice personality inventory

“…Despite the popularity of rating scales in personality assessment, multidimensional forced-choice (MFC) personality inventories have gained a certain level of approval to deter the impression management of respondents (Arthur et al, 2021). They are less susceptible to faking (Martínez & Salgado, 2021;Salgado & Lado, 2018) and may be used in high-stakes situations (Cao & Drasgow, 2019;Stark et al, 2014) such as personnel selection.…”

“…The conscious distortion of self-reported answers to personality tests yields a problem for personnel selection practitioners. The forcedchoice (FC) format is proposed as an alternative to make it more difficult for respondents to distort their answers (Arthur et al, 2021) as it differs from rating scales with respect to how test items are presented. Respondents must choose statement(s) from two or more items (called a block) in terms of the best fit to their personality.…”