The moderating effects of Social Desirability responding on the criterion-related validity of self-report personality inventory

Abstract

This study aimed to examine how social desirability responding(SDR) affects the criterion-related validity of self-reported personality. Specifically, this study examined how SDR, impression management(IM) and self deceptive enhancement(SDE) can take distinct effects on criteria when personality traits of 91 expatriates such as empathy, cooperation, and friendliness predict their performance criteria. Although previous studies suggested either suppression or moderation effects of SDR, the results indicated that there was no suppression effects but statistically significant moderation effects of SDE on the link between each of some predictors(empathy and cooperation) and expatriate’s negative emotional expression and helping behavior in organization rated by peers(host country nationals). However, such effects were not supported in case of IM. The importance of specifying two factors of SDR and suggestions for the future research were discussed.