Religiosity and Social Desirability

A series of five studies explored the meaning of the positive relationship between End religiosity and the Crowne-Marlowe Social Desirability Scale (SDS). Among the more noteworthy findings were the observations that 1) End religiosity was largely unrelated to measures conceptually associated with social desirability response sets; 2) neither End nor the SDS yielded any important evidence of a relationship with rnaladaptive psychological functioning; 3) students at a religious college were less socially anxious than students at a public state university, a result contradicting the idea that religious persons are especially sensitive to evaluation by others; and 4) a substantial number of SDS items appear confounded by a religious relevance dimension. Use of the SDS in statistical control procedures may therefore be inappropriate in studies examining religiosity; and as a consequence, attempts to link the End orientation with exaggerated social desirability concerns may need to proceed with caution.