The waiver of signature in personal reports.

Anonymity and Attitudes toward Work

“…Differences have been found in face to face interviews (Benson, 1941;Metzner & Mann, 1952), when Ss completed personality inventories (Olsen, 1936), when one group of respondents were administered a questionnaire by an outside consultant and another gro~lp by an individual from the same organization (Dunnette & Henernan, 1956), and when respondents were told individually that they would be required to identify themselves (Klein, Maher, & Dunnington, 1967). Differences have been found in face to face interviews (Benson, 1941;Metzner & Mann, 1952), when Ss completed personality inventories (Olsen, 1936), when one group of respondents were administered a questionnaire by an outside consultant and another gro~lp by an individual from the same organization (Dunnette & Henernan, 1956), and when respondents were told individually that they would be required to identify themselves (Klein, Maher, & Dunnington, 1967).…”

The K factor as a suppressor variable in the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory.

“…One of the most important failings of almost all structured personality tests is their susceptibility to "faking" or "lying" in one way or another, as well as their even greater susceptibility to unconscious self-deception and role-playing on the part of individuals who may be consciously quite honest and sincere in their responses. The possibility of such factors having an invalidating effect upon the scores obtained has been mentioned by many writers, including Adams (1941), Allport (1928Allport ( , 1937Allport ( , 1942, Bernreuter (1933aBernreuter ( ,b, 1940, Bills (1941), Bordin (1943), Eisenberg and Wesman (1941), Guilford and Guilford (1936), Humm and Humm (1944), Humm and Wadsworth (1935), Kelly, Miles and Terman (1936), Laird (1925), Landis and Katz (1934), Maller (1930), Olson (1936), Rosenzweig (1934Rosenzweig ( , 1938, Ruch (1942), Strong (1943), Symonds (1932), Vernon (1934), Washburne (1935), Willoughby [and Morse] (1936) and others. One of the assumed advantages of the projective methods is that they are relatively less influenced by such distorting factors, although this assumption should be critically evaluated.…”

“…Frenkel-Brunswik (1939) investigated tendencies to selfdeception in rating oneself, finding in some cases marked negative relations between self-judgments and the evaluation of others. Hendrickson (1932), cited by Olson (1936), reported that a group of teachers earned significantly more stable, dominant, extroverted and self-sufficient scores on the Bernreuter scales when instructed to take the test as though they were applying for a position, than when under more neutral instructions. Ruch (1942) showed that college students could fake extroversion on the Bernreuter to the extent of achieving a median at the 98th percentile of Bernreuter's norms, as contrasted with 2 a "naive" median at the 50th percentile.…”

“…What is clear from his investigation is that people are able to influence their scores to a considerable extent if they choose to, and that the average student's stereotype of what is "socially desirable" seems to be an individual who is dominant, self-sufficient, and stable. Maller (1930), Metfessel (1935), Olson (1936) and Spencer (1938) have studied the effects of anonymity on responses to self-rating situations and shown that the requirement of signing one's name has a definite effect on the scores. Kelly, Miles and Terman (1936) demonstrated the great ease with which scores on the Terman-Miles Masculinity-Femininity Test could be "faked" in either direction once the subjects had been let in on the secret of what the test measured.…”

“…The deception involved is not desirable, and in any case the clinical patient, unlike the sophomore student, knows perfectly well that the examiner is interested in his score individually. Lacking anonymity, it has been suggested by Olson (1936) that the name be signed at the conclusion of the administration instead of at the top of the page. This suggestion was carried into practice by Maller (1932) in his Character Sketches.…”