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The Secret of Social Desirability: Why Do We Always Want Others to Like Our Answers?
In social science research, the so-called social desirability bias is a response bias that refers to the phenomenon that survey respondents tend to answer questions in a way that others think will be preferred. This may manifest as over-reporting of "good behavior" or under-reporting of "bad" or unwelcome behavior. This bias poses considerable challenges in self-report research, hampering the interpretation of average tendencies as well as individual differences.
This bias makes self-reporting of personal abilities, personality, sexual behavior, and substance use particularly worrisome.
For example, when respondents are asked, “How often do you masturbate?”, social taboos against masturbation may cause them to underreport the frequency of this behavior or choose to avoid answering. Therefore, average rates of masturbation derived from self-reported surveys are likely to be significant underestimates. Similarly, when asked, “Do you use drugs/illegal substances?” respondents may be influenced by their environment and deny their use because it is too socially taboo, or rationalize their behavior by saying, “I I only smoke weed in front of my friends."
Among sexual partners, men tend to over-report their numbers, while women tend to under-report; however, the average reports in both cases are likely to be influenced by social desirability bias.
Other sensitive topics, such as self-reported personality traits, personal income, low self-worth, medication habits, religious beliefs, etc., may also be affected by this bias. In such a social situation, respondents may choose to hide the truth for fear of being pressured by others' evaluations. This poses a major challenge for researchers in interpreting the data: Do these self-descriptions reflect actual personality traits, or are they influenced by social desirability?
Research shows that there are significant differences in social desirability bias in the response styles of different social groups. In 1953, Allen L. Edwards first proposed the concept of social desirability and revealed the impact of this bias on personality measurement through a series of experiments. He developed the first social desirability scale, which consisted of 39 yes-or-no items that were assessed with high consistency across different populations. Later studies showed that social desirability bias directly affects the authenticity of people's self-descriptions, which in turn affects the survey results of various types of cases.
Because people have different sensitivities to social expectations when expressing themselves, it can be difficult to distinguish between well-characterized individuals who respond truthfully and those who distort their answers.
Until the 1990s, the most commonly used tool for measuring socially desirable responding was the Marlowe-Crown Social Desirability Scale, which played an important role in the application of psychology. In order to measure social desirability bias more accurately, Deroy L. Paulos proposed the Balanced Desirability Responding Scale in 1991, which is designed to measure two types of social desirability responding, including impression management and self-deceptive emphasis.
There are many ways to reduce social desirability bias, among which anonymous and confidential survey methods have been shown to significantly increase the true reporting rate of respondents. When respondents do not feel they have to answer questions face to face, they tend to express themselves more openly. The study also found that using some specific question techniques can effectively reduce the occurrence of such errors. In addition, with the advancement of technology, the use of electronic questionnaires to conduct confidential surveys has gradually become a popular method.
The effectiveness of these methods is indeed controversial, and researchers need to be very careful, especially when dealing with some extremely sensitive issues.
Therefore, we can't help but think: In a society that increasingly values personal privacy and authenticity, should we seek more effective methods to ensure that data can truly reflect social phenomena and the essence of human nature?
