Situational Demand and Its Impact on Construct and Criterion Validity of a Personality Questionnaire: State and Trait, a Couple you just can’t Study Separately!

The present paper had four goals which all aimed at understanding
more of the psychological process taking place when people
intentionally distort their answers to a questionnaire. Moreover,
possible causes for individual differences in responding to
situational demand were investigated. Finally, it was explored
whether there were any differences in the criterion validities of
different conscientiousness scores. The results of the qualitative
and the quantitative analyses show that the psychological process
happening when people fake a questionnaire starts with the
evaluation of the importance of an item regarding the situational
demand. This evaluation is based on specific knowledge, implicit
theories, and reasoning. The actual answer then depends on the
preference for one of three response sets: regular response (rr),
slight faking (sf), and extreme faking (ef). People with high self
efficacy of positive self – presentation beliefs tend to endorse
extreme categories. Moreover, the actual answer has a solid base in
the real conscientiousness score. Finally, it was shown that
honest, faked, and MRM corrected conscientiousness scores did not
differ in their criterion validity, but in the ranking of people.