Social Desirability and Affect: Linking Domains of Content

Abstract

Emotions influence decision making as do more general personal and social values. Conflict between these factors may result in increased processing time in order to select a single response to self-report personality measures. Given the broad influence of social desirability on test responding, the current study assessed affective reactions to adjectives with known social desirability evaluations for the purpose of evaluating whether the affect experienced by an evaluator is related to the social desirability of the stimuli. Twenty-nine university undergraduates responded with either approach or avoidance to a series of adjectives used in personality assessment with the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. Words with higher social desirability values received more positive affective evaluations and had faster response times, suggesting a link between affect and social desirability. Discussion of the findings relates to current theoretical models on social desirability and affect.