Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding

The Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (BIDR) is a psychometric tool that serves as a 40-item self-report questionnaire. BIDR assesses the potential social desirability bias in respondents' answers and further shows the composition of impression management (IM) and self-deception enhancement (SDE) within that bias.Paulhus, D. L. (1998). Balanced inventory of desirable responding. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1037/t08059-000

BIDR was developed by Paulhus in 1988 based on his Two-Component Model of social desirability,Paulhus, D. L. (1984). Two-component models of socially desirable responding. Journal of personality and social psychology, 46(3), 598. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1984-17817-001 with the aim of addressing the dispute regarding whether social desirability should be controlled in research.Paulhus, D. L. (1986). Self-deception and impression management in test responses. In Personality assessment via questionnaires: Current issues in theory and measurement (pp. 143-165). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-70751-3_8 This work primarily served as a summary of research findings at the time on social desirability in psychometrics . Specifically, the existence of the two factors was proved by statistical factor regression analysis of a large number of preliminary studies,Block, J. (1965). The challenge of response sets: Unconfounding meaning, acquiescence, and social desirability in the MMPI. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1966-02934-000Wiggins, J. S. (1959). Interrelationships among MMPI measures of dissimulation under standard and social desirability instruction. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 23(5), 419. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1960-05643-001 and the conceptualization of the two factors was based on experimental verification of multiple hypotheses from various fields of psychology. BIDR updated the measurement of social desirability from a one-dimensional measurement of behavior to a measurement of a composite concept that includes both 'substantive' and 'stylistic' component, and further advocated caution in controlling social desirability bias under different situations.

BIDR has been applied in various scenarios since its establishment. Several studies suggested that BIDR is the first choice for measuring social desirability.Gittelman, S., Lange, V., Cook, W. A., Frede, S. M., Lavrakas, P. J., Pierce, C., & Thomas, R. K. (2015). Accounting for social-desirability bias in survey sampling: a model for predicting and calibrating the direction and magnitude of social-desirability bias. Journal of Advertising Research, 55(3), 242-254. DOI: 10.2501/JAR-2015-006Kam, C. (2013). Probing item social desirability by correlating personality items with Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (BIDR): A validity examination. Personality and Individual Differences, 54(4), 513-518. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2012.10.017Mikulic, I. M., Crespi, M., & Caballero, R. (2016). Estudio psicométrico del inventario balanceado de respuesta deseable. Anuario de Psicología, 46(2), 58-66. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anpsic.2016.07.002Steenkamp, J. B. E., De Jong, M. G., & Baumgartner, H. (2010). Socially desirable response tendencies in survey research. Journal of Marketing Research, 47(2), 199-214. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkr.47.2.199 However, BIDR has limitations in terms of convenience and item size. In current practice, the primary tool for measuring social desirability is still the Marlowe–Crowne Social Desirability Scale(MC-SDS).Kwak, D. H., Holtkamp, P., & Kim, S. S. (2019). Measuring and controlling social desirability bias: Applications in information systems research. Journal of the Association for Information Systems, 20(4),

History The early work of BIDR reviewed psychological studies around social desirability during that time and integrated insights from various other psychological fields including psychoanalysis, personality psychology, cognitive psychology, and statistical psychology.Paulhus, D. L., & Reid, D. B. (1991). Enhancement and denial in socially desirable responding. Journal of personality and social psychology, 60(2), 307.https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1991-18338-001 With the theoretical updates of social desirability, BIDR advocated for a balanced measurement of SDE and IM content to predict social desirability. This approach enables BIDR to demonstrate better adaptability in predicting the respondents' social desirability in different situations. BIDR also requires the evaluator to handle the results more cautiously. In the dispute over controlling social desirability, BIDR offered a moderate perspective, which to some extent alleviated the controversy at the time.Larson, R. B. (2019). Controlling social desirability bias. International Journal of Market Research, 61(5), 534-547. https://doi.org/10.1177/1470785318805305

Social desirability bias in psychometrics In psychometrics, social desirability bias represents response biases that are triggered by social cues. The concept of social desirability in psychometrics can be traced back to Bernreuter's research published in 1933.Bernreuter, R. G. (1933). Validity of the personality inventory. Personnel Journal. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1933-03588-001 Edwards introduced this concept formally into psychometrics during 1953-1957 and developed the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)-L to control possible social desirability in self-report.Edwards, A. L. (1957). The social desirability variable in personality assessment and research. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1958-00464-000 Social desirability has then always been an important topic in psychometrics, as psychometricians believed that it could seriously undermine the validity of results.

The Stylistic vs. Substantive Debate Early psychologists primarily viewed social desirability as an instrumental behavior serving a purpose in social circumstances. Based on this perspective, psychologists agreed to remove the content distorted by social desirability from self-reports to protect the validity of self-report results. Some pathological cases at that time reported unintentional social role-playing behavior, which indicated a connection between social desirability and personality.Alloy, L. B., & Abramson, L. Y. (1979). Judgment of contingency in depressed and nondepressed students: Sadder but wiser?. Journal of experimental psychology: General, 108(4), 441. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1981-02686-001 Earlier research suggested that social desirability was substantially more substantive than stylistic in the non-pathological field.Heilbrun, A. B. (1964). Social-learning theory, social desirability, and the MMPI. Psychological Bulletin, 61(5), 377. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1965-01835-001Messick, S. (1960). Dimensions of social desirability. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 24(4), 279. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1961-02211-001

Hogan's work in Socioanalytic Theory offered a perspective that emphasizes the stylistic content of social desirability.Hogan, R. (1982). A socioanalytic theory of personality. In Nebraska symposium on motivation. University of Nebraska Press.https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1983-32712-001 This perspective posited that social desirability originates beneath the self-images and is driven by an unconscious process, indicating that social desirability may not always involve conscious fraudulent behavior.Wiggins, J. S. (1966). Substantive dimensions of self-report in the MMPI item pool. Psychological Monographs: General and Applied, 80(22), 1. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2011-19293-001Rogers, T. B. (1974). An analysis of two central stages underlying responding to personality items: The self-referent decision and response selection. Journal of Research in Personality, 8(2), 128-138.https://doi.org/10.1016/0092-6566(74)90014-2 Meanwhile, research from the field of personality psychology reported that social desirability was highly correlated with a range of prosocial personality traits, including agreeableness, conscientiousness, and self-esteem,Taylor, J. B., Carithers, M., & Coyne, L. (1976). MMPI performance, response set, and the" self-concept hypothesis.". Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 44(3), 351. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1976-20061-001Strosahl, K. D., Linehan, M. M., & Chiles, J. A. (1984). Will the real social desirability please stand up? Hopelessness, depression, social desirability, and the prediction of suicidal behavior. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 52(3), 449. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1984-23406-001 and negatively correlated with the Beck Depression Inventory.Roth, D. L., & Ingram, R. E. (1985). Factors in the Self-Deception Questionnaire: Associations with depression. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48(1), 243. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1985-17551-001 A serious problem emerged as psychologists questioned whether existing social desirability scales were actually filtering out liars or filtering out venerable people. Psychometricians began to argue about whether they should develop psychometric tools aim at strictly controlling social desirability.

Psychometricians with differing viewpoints used different methodologies to develop psychometric tools for social desirability bias. Those tools often showed minimal correlations with each other.Millham, J., & Kellogg, R. W. (1980). Need for social approval: impression management or self-deception?. Journal of research in Personality, 14(4), 445-457. https://doi.org/10.1016/0092-6566(80)90003-3 Additionally, some psychometric tools of other fields reported a great loss of their predictive effect after controlling social desirability.Amelang, M., & Bartussek, D. (1970). Research on validity of a new lie scale. Diagnostica. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1972-31582-001Edwards, A. L. (1970). The measurement of personality traits by scales and inventories. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1974-01072-000McCrae, R. R., & Costa, P. T. (1983). Social desirability scales: More substance than style. Journal of consulting and clinical psychology, 51(6), 882. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1984-05649-001 Some psychologists suggested that these problems indicated a systematic problem between the objects that social desirability scale aimed to capture and the dimensions contained within social desirability. Psychologists began to try to further explore the dimensions of social desirability.

Two factors of social desirability The Alpha and Gamma factors, two distinct factors that measure different content of social desirability were found in some comprehensive review study of social desirability.Wiggins, J. S. (1964). Convergences among stylistic response measures from objective personality tests. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 24(3), 551-562. https://doi.org/10.1177/001316446402400310 Scales that could be highly loaded onto the Alpha factor include Edward's Social Desirability Scale(SDS) and Ullmann's MMPI,Ullmann, L. P. (1962). An empirically derived MMPI scale which measures facilitation-inhibition of recognition of threatening stimuli. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 18(2). https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1964-08535-001 while scales highly loaded onto the Gamma factor include Wiggins' SDS and the MMPI-K.Meehl, P. E., & Hathaway, S. R. (1946). The K factor as a suppressor variable in the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory. Journal of applied psychology, 30(5), 525. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0053634 After the two factors was discovered, Damarin and Messick proposed the Two-Component Theory of social desirability and advocated conceptualising of the two factors.Damarin, F., & Messick, S. (1965). RESPONSE STYLES AS PERSONALITY VARIABLES: A THEORETICAL INTEGRATION OF MULTIVARIATE RESEARCH 1. ETS Research Bulletin Series, 1965(1), i-116. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2333-8504.1965.tb00967.x