Investigating the influence of social desirability on personality factor structure

This study provides a comprehensive investigation into whether social desir ability alters the factor structure of personality measures. The study brou ght together 4 large data sets wherein different organizational samples res ponded to different personality measures. This facilitated conducting 4 sep arate yet parallel investigations. Within each data set, individuals identi fied through a social desirability scale as responding in an honest manner were grouped together, and individuals identified as responding in a highly socially desirable manner were grouped together. Using various analyses, t he fit of higher order factor structure models was compared across the 2 gr oups. Results were the same for each data set. Social desirability had litt le influence on the higher order factor structures that characterized the r elationships among the scales of the personality measures.