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To examine the claim that self presentation distorts the structure of personality dimensions, 370 subjects were asked to respond as job applicants to a measure of the Big Five personality traits and two measures of socially desirable responding (SDR): Self-Deceptive Enhancement and Impression Management. They were randomly assigned to respond using one of seven strategies: fake the best possible candidate, fake good without arousing suspicion, play up your good points, respond honestly, be modest, fake bad without arousing suspicion, fake worst. The SDR scales and the Big Five were highly intercorrelated under all strategies except honest responding. Further analyses suggested that the high intercorrelations were due to outliers, not to a true convergence of dimensions. It was concluded that self presentation can either inflate or deflate intercorrelations among evaluative scales. Self presentation in individuals was best diagnosed by the Impression Management and Conscientiousness scales.
Paulhus et al. (Wed,) studied this question.