RESPONSE STRATEGIES WHEN FAKING PERSONALITY QUESTIONNAIRES IN A VOCATIONAL SELECTION SETTING

This research investigated whether respondents rely on their stereotyp e of members of a particular occupation when attempting to fake person ality questionnaires to gain employment in that occupation. The subjec t's test profiles when attempting to fake the MBTI to gain employment as psychiatric nurses were compared to those of actual psychiatric nur ses as well as with the subjects' profiles under either the normal adm inistration protocol, instructions to complete the test to give the be st general impression of themselves, or instructions to describe a typ ical psychiatric nurse via their test responses. Although the subjects failed to imitate the profiles of psychiatric nurses, their responses were highly sensitive to these instructional manipulations. The data suggested that subjects' faking strategy is based on their stereotype of members of the target occupation. Although there was a significant difference between the subjects' fake-job and stereotype profiles, the se two conditions yielded identical typologies. In addition, the Eucli dean distance between these two profiles was significantly less than t hat between the fake-job profiles and those obtained in any other cond ition.