People “fake-good” on personality self-reports more strongly in a job context than in a dating context

Socially desirable responding can impair the validity of self-report questionnaires, especially in high-stakes situations in which people are incentivized to manage the impression they make on others. To assess the potential impact of impression management, previous studies have used faking-good instructions (i.e., they have encouraged respondents to present themselves favorably) in a neutral context or in job/university application contexts. The current experiment examined the context dependency of faking-good effects. Participants (N = 231) completed the Big Five Inventory-2 twice, first honestly and then with faking-good instructions in a job or dating context. Socially desirable responding was present in both contexts. Yet, it was more pronounced in the job context than in the dating context for many (but not all) Big Five dimensions and facets. Future research should investigate whether faking behavior differs across contexts not only under faking-good instructions but also in high-stakes situations (e.g., personnel selection or online dating).