1. Response biases

2. Think about these questions…
„I like hurting people”
„I tend to want others to admire me”
„Sometimes, I am lazy.”

3. Response biases Can we trust the test score?
Biases related to tested person
Affect the test result
Threats to reliability
Especially self-report methods

4. Four patterns of responding
Honest responding
Irrelevant responding e.g. answering randomly
Defensiveness – conscious denial
Malingering – conscious fabrication

5. Response biases Social desirability bias (faking good) Faking bad
Acquiescence (or yea saying)
Opposition (or nay saying)
Positional set (extremity and mid-point response)
Random responding

6. Faking
Faking – deliberate systematic distortion of the responses because the respondent wishes to create a particular impression.
An emphasis on socially desirable characteristics
Denial of negative behaviors

7. Faking good and bad
Faking good – endorsing items that characterize personal honesty and virtue, good adjustment and mental health
Reporting lack of weakness
Faking bad – overendorse symptoms (clinical), a desire to appear poorly adjusted, perhaps mentally ill.

8. Acquiescence vs. Opposition
Answering always YES or NO

9. Positional set
Answering according to the position of the anwer, e.g. Likert scale:

10. Random responding Honest error – placing answers incorrectly
Lack of understanding
Willful behavior
Lack of motivation

11. Reasons of biases in personality tests
Delibarate faking
Idealized presentation of oneself as opposed to a more realistic presentation
Innacurate presentation because of lack of insight

12. Dealing with biases
Incorporating measures of response bias in the test
Compare results of a test with a measure of bias
Determine how sensitive a scale is to faking

13. Detection of biases
One group – one instruction. We look for items with low endorsment, e.g. „I am extremely honest in all my dealings”.
One group – two instructions, e.g. „fake good”, „answer as a chronic alcoholic”
Two groups – two instruction – one group with disorder and second normal that fakes. How the items differ, e.g. „I hear voices”

14. Other methods Construct specific items:
have high predictive validity but low face validity
Have high face validity but no predictive validity

15. Discourage faking
Warning that distortion can be detected and punishment will follow
Forced-choice items that are equated on social desirability, e.g. are you more reliable or agreeable?
The use of subtle vs obvious items
Use control scales

16. Example - MMPI Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory
Identify personality structure and psychopatology
567 questions
Includes few so called validity scales – whether a diagnosis is valid

17. Validity scales in MMPI
Cannot Say Scale (?): the number of items on the assessment that were left unanswered.
Reasons: suspiciousness, lack of understanding, depression, fear of loss of privacy etc.)

18. The Lie scale Delibarate efforts to lie on the tests
Detects whether individuals are making themselves seem more well adjusted than they actually are.
Individuals that wish to present themselves in a more positive light

19. The Lie scale Facts common that most people are willing to admit:
Denial of agression
Prejudices
Poor self-control
Examples:
„Sometimes I don’t say truth”
„Sometimes I procrastinate my work”

20. Infrequency Scale To present oneself in a bad light.
Items that endorsed very rarely on normal population – less than 10%
Items ask about hostility, poor physicall health, feelings of isolation, atypical attitudes towards authority.
„I have diarrhea once a month ore more often”
„Sometimes ghosts attack me”

21. Infrequency Scale High score may be due to: Random answering
Conscious tendency to present in bad light
Malingering
Crying for help
Deviant behavior, not conventional

22. Defensiveness Scale
Tendency to fake on the test in order to make themselves look better.
Lie Scale and the Defensiveness Scale seem similar,
Defensiveness Scale focuses on lies due to "defensiveness in admitting problems" and is done extremely subtly; whereas the lie scale detects simple lies meant to cast a better light on oneself.

23. Defensiveness Scale
People may present themselves in a positive light unconsciously
„Very rarerly I argue with my family.” (No)

24. Other problems with biases
Test anxiety – unpleasant emotions related to test taking.
Test situation is seen as threatning.
Testwiseness – test sophistication, person’s ability to use the characteristics and format of a test (or test situation) to obtain a higher score