Looking Good or Being Good? The Role of Social Desirability Tendencies in Student Perceptions of Institutional Mission and Values

Summary

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Two samples of college students (Sample 1, n = 106; Sample 2, n = 107) completed self-report measures that assessed their perceptions of their university's mission and values along with their tendency to seek social approval. With Sample 1, global social desirability was not predictive of any student perceptions related to institutional mission and values. With Sample 2, however, impression management tendencies were predictive of perceptions of the institution's mission and claims for live-long commitment to value growth. Results suggest that student perception of their university's mission and values are "clouded" by their desires to impress others. Future research on student development must include control procedures that take into account social desirability tendencies and perhaps other impression management motives.

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Looking Good or Being Good? The Role of Social Desirability Tendencies in Student Perceptions of Institutional Mission and Values

A consistent issue that plagues researchers who instruct participants to complete self-report instruments is the issue of response bias in stating their attitudes, beliefs, opinions, and personality styles. Social desirability bias, the tendency to answer self-report items in a manner that may heighten social approval instead of reflecting one's true feelings (Crowne & Marlowe, 1960; Paulhus, 1991), is one major type of response bias researchers studied extensively over the past four decades. It was suggested that social desirability tendencies are strongest among respondents with higher levels of education, because of their greater awareness of what are normatively appropriate responses (Krysan, 1998). While socially desirable resp...

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