How social desirability influences the relationship between measures of personality and key constructs in positive psychology
Persson, Hampus ; Björklund, Fredrik LU
and Bäckström, Martin
LU
(2025)
In Journal of Happiness Studies
26(3).
- Abstract
- Does socially desirable responding produce exaggerated correlations between self-ratings of personality and positive psychology constructs? We operationalized social desirability as the evaluative factor, i.e. the tendency to react to evaluative content in questionnaire items and related one standard measure and one evaluatively neutralized measure of the Big Five to measures of five key positive psychology constructs (optimism, purpose in life, satisfaction with life, well-being and sense of coherence). Structural equation modelling (N = 439) revealed substantially different relationships between the Big Five and positive psychology constructs when the evaluative factor was accounted for. The results indicated that although the Big Five... (More)
- Does socially desirable responding produce exaggerated correlations between self-ratings of personality and positive psychology constructs? We operationalized social desirability as the evaluative factor, i.e. the tendency to react to evaluative content in questionnaire items and related one standard measure and one evaluatively neutralized measure of the Big Five to measures of five key positive psychology constructs (optimism, purpose in life, satisfaction with life, well-being and sense of coherence). Structural equation modelling (N = 439) revealed substantially different relationships between the Big Five and positive psychology constructs when the evaluative factor was accounted for. The results indicated that although the Big Five still predict the positive psychology constructs when the evaluative factor is accounted for, their influence is strongly reduced and the evaluative factor itself a major predictor. Arguably, this suggests that when the evaluative factor is not accounted for, the use of self-ratings invites social desirability to inflate the estimated relationships between personality traits and evaluatively loaded constructs in positive psychology. Alternative interpretations of the evaluative factor are discussed, as well as the importance of probing different solutions to measurement issues surrounding evaluative psychological constructs. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
https://lup.lub.lu.se/record/acc73f5c-b064-4927-a17f-0f7ea2d84cd5
- author
- Persson, Hampus
; Björklund, Fredrik
LU
and Bäckström, Martin
LU
- organization
- publishing date
- 2025-02-22
- type
- Contribution to journal
- publication status
- published
- subject
- keywords
- Personality, Positive psychology, Social desirability, Structural equation modeling, PERMA
- in
- Journal of Happiness Studies
- volume
- 26
- issue
- 3
- article number
- 33
- pages
- 17 pages
- publisher
- Springer
- external identifiers
-
- scopus:85218702919
- ISSN
- 1389-4978
- DOI
- 10.1007/s10902-025-00879-3
- language
- English
- LU publication?
- yes
- id
- acc73f5c-b064-4927-a17f-0f7ea2d84cd5
- date added to LUP
- 2025-02-22 15:04:25
- date last changed
- 2025-06-19 11:51:14
@article{acc73f5c-b064-4927-a17f-0f7ea2d84cd5,
abstract = {{Does socially desirable responding produce exaggerated correlations between self-ratings of personality and positive psychology constructs? We operationalized social desirability as the evaluative factor, i.e. the tendency to react to evaluative content in questionnaire items and related one standard measure and one evaluatively neutralized measure of the Big Five to measures of five key positive psychology constructs (optimism, purpose in life, satisfaction with life, well-being and sense of coherence). Structural equation modelling (N = 439) revealed substantially different relationships between the Big Five and positive psychology constructs when the evaluative factor was accounted for. The results indicated that although the Big Five still predict the positive psychology constructs when the evaluative factor is accounted for, their influence is strongly reduced and the evaluative factor itself a major predictor. Arguably, this suggests that when the evaluative factor is not accounted for, the use of self-ratings invites social desirability to inflate the estimated relationships between personality traits and evaluatively loaded constructs in positive psychology. Alternative interpretations of the evaluative factor are discussed, as well as the importance of probing different solutions to measurement issues surrounding evaluative psychological constructs.}},
author = {{Persson, Hampus and Björklund, Fredrik and Bäckström, Martin}},
issn = {{1389-4978}},
keywords = {{Personality; Positive psychology; Social desirability; Structural equation modeling; PERMA}},
language = {{eng}},
month = {{02}},
number = {{3}},
publisher = {{Springer}},
series = {{Journal of Happiness Studies}},
title = {{How social desirability influences the relationship between measures of personality and key constructs in positive psychology}},
url = {{http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10902-025-00879-3}},
doi = {{10.1007/s10902-025-00879-3}},
volume = {{26}},
year = {{2025}},
}