Social Desirability Bias
🧠Psych - 65 / 100
Hello,
Today, we will be talking about the Social Desirability Bias.
What is it?
Some people may answer your questions in such manner to appear favourable.
Example -
For example, a person may be asked to indicate which items in a list of characteristics describe him or her. The underlying assumption in the use of self-reports to collect information is that people are experts in knowing themselves.
However, researchers recognize that individuals can distort their responses to self-reports in ways that are inaccurate and misleading.
Distortion of responses may be to the result of an individual’s disposition (i.e., their personality) or caused by aspects of the situation (e.g., the way a statement is phrased).
Social desirability bias is one way of distorting responses that has received a large amount of empirical investigation. [1]
Where does it occur?
Since the beginning of survey research, there have been many examples of socially desirable answers: for example, overreporting of having a library card, having voted, and attending church and underreporting of bankruptcy, drunken driving, illegal drug use, and negative racial attitudes.
Why do I need to know?
Because of social desirability bias, your audience’s feedback or responses to surveys may not give you a correct information of data.
Therefore, for a better evaluation, you can use different methods to combat it. Like making the purpose of survey vague, paying attention to the words used in the questions i.e. rephrasing them etc.
Takeaways:-
People in your survey can be biased to social desirability which can affect your outcomes.
Rephrase questions in your survey such that it doesn’t reflect the purpose of it.
References & Studies:-
http://psychology.iresearchnet.com/social-psychology/personality/social-desirability-bias/
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