To See Ourselves as Others See Us!: Relations Among Self-Perceptions, Peer-Perceptions, and Expected Peer-Perceptions of Personality

Past research claims to demonstrate (a) widespread intercultural agreement on the social desirability of personality test items, and (b) that a priori scaling of an item on this presumably universal social desirability continuum is highly predictive of the probability of its endorsement. These notions are challenged by present findings which show (1) widespread disagreement among nominally identified groups within a single culture as to the desirabilities of a sample of commonly used personality items, and (2) substantial inconsistency of a social desirability wale values to predict individual endorsement probabilities. Implications for best construction are discussed, particularly concerning the use of forced-choice formats for personality inventories.