The Relationship Between Honesty-Humility And Social Desirability: High-Stake Versus Low-Stake Situations

Sammanfattning: Faking in applications was found to be an important issue in which social desirability plays a relevant role. The present study brings Social Desirability Responding, Honesty-Humility, and different stakes of situations into relation. Social Desirability Responding, i.e. Communion Management and Self-Deceptive Enhancement, operationalized by the Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (BIDR) and Honesty-Humility (HEXACO-60) are analysed regarding their relationships and differences in and between high-stake, low-stake, and high-stake-low-framed situations. Relationships between Honesty-Humility and Communion Management were significantly positive, while no relationship between Honesty-Humility and Self-Deceptive Enhancement was found. There were also no significant differences in the constructs across situations. It was further investigated whether individuals scoring low in Honesty-Humility show different responding behaviour dependent on situational frames compared to individuals scoring high in Honesty-Humility. No significant differences were found. Results imply that Social Desirable Responding scales do not measure what they intent to, hence further research is needed. The tested high-stake-low-framed situational instruction did not significantly reduce faking. However, exploring the option of framing application situations is recommended for organizations. Further, the problematic nature of measuring Social Desirability Responding is considered.