Table Of Content■ N ew Perspectives on Faking
in Personality Assessment
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N ew Perspectives on
Faking in Personality
Assessment
E D I T E D B Y
M atthias Ziegler
C arolyn MacCann
R ichard D. Roberts
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1
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Z iegler, Matthias, -
N ew perspectives on faking in personality assessment/Matthias Ziegler, Carolyn MacCann,
R ichard D. Roberts.
p . cm.
I ncludes bibliographical references and index.
I SBN-: ---- (hardcover) . Personality assessment. I. MacCann, Carolyn.
I I. Roberts, Richard D. III. Title.
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■ C O N T E N T S
F oreword ix
P reface xi
A cknowledgments xv
C ontributors xvii
P A R T O N E ■ General Background
. Faking: Knowns, Unknowns, and Points of Contention
M ATTHIAS ZIEGLER, CAROLYN MACCANN, AND
RICHARD D. ROBERTS
P A R T T W O ■ D o People Fake and Does It Matter? The Existence of
Faking and Its Impact on Personality Assessments
. People Fake Only When T ey N eed to Fake
J ILL E. ELL INGSON
. T e Rules of Evidence and the Prevalence of Applicant Faking
R ICHARD L. GRIFF ITH AND PATRICK D. CONVERSE
. Questioning Old Assumptions: Faking and the
Personality–Performance Relationship
D . BRENT SMITH AND MAX MCDANIEL
. Faking Does Distort Self-Report Personality Assessment
R ONALD R. HOLDEN AND ANGELA S. BOOK
P A R T T H R E E ■ C an We Tell If People Fake? The Detection and
Correction of Response Distortion
. A Conceptual Representation of Faking: Putting the
Horse Back in Front of the Cart
E R IC D. HEGGESTAD
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vi ■ Contents
. Innovative Item Response Process and Bayesian Faking
Detection Methods: More Questions T an Answers
N ATHAN R. KUNCEL, MATTHEW BORNEMAN, AND
THOMAS KIGER
. Searching for Unicorns: Item Response T eory-Based
Solutions to the Faking Problem
M ICHAEL J . Z ICKAR AND KATHERINE A. SL ITER
. Methods for Correcting for Faking
M ATTHEW C. REEDER AND ANN MARIE RYAN
. Overclaiming on Personality Questionnaires
D ELROY L. PAULHUS
. T e Detection of Faking T rough Word Use
M ATTHEW VENTURA
P A R T F O U R ■ C an We Stop People from Faking?
Preventive Strategies
. Application of Preventive Strategies
S TEPHAN DILCHERT AND DENIZ S. ONES
. Social Desirability in Personality Assessment: Outline
of a Model to Explain Individual Dif erences
M ARTIN BÄCKSTRÖM, FREDRIK BJÖRKLUND, AND
MAGNUS R. LARSSON
. Constructing Fake-Resistant Personality Tests Using Item
Response T eory: High-Stakes Personality Testing with
Multidimensional Pairwise Preferences
S TEPHEN STARK, OLEKSANDR S. CHERNYSHENKO, AND
FRITZ DRASGOW
. Is Faking Inevitable? Person-Level Strategies for
Reducing Faking
B R IAN LUKOFF
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Contents ■ vii
P A R T F I V E ■ I s Faking a Consequential Issue Outside a Job
Selection Context? Current Applications and
Future Directions in Clinical and
Educational Settings
. Plaintif s Who Malinger: Impact of Litigation on
Fake Testimony
R YAN C. W. HALL AND RICHARD C. W. HALL
. Intentional and Unintentional Faking in Education
J EREMY BURRUS, BOBBY D. NAEMI, AND
PATRICK C. KYLLONEN
P A R T S I X ■ Conclusions
. Faking in Personality Assessment: Ref ections
and Recommendations
C AROLYN MACCANN, MATTHIAS ZIEGLER, AND
RICHARD D. ROBERTS
. Faking in Personality Assessments: Where Do We Stand?
P AUL R. SACKETT
I ndex 345
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■ F O R E W O R D
F aking has long been the sof underbelly of personality research. Beneath the
gaudy cavalcade of psychometric models and validity coef cients lurks the fear
that respondents on personality questionnaires are simply “making it up.” As may
happen when people are confronted by an existential threat, stereotyped coping
strategies develop. Some researchers deny the whole problem, or at best f aunt
some reassuringly trivial correlations between the trait of interest and some social
desirability measure. Others— e specially in applied psychology— a re apt to dismiss
the whole f eld of personality assessment.
N either denial of the problem nor disparagement of personality scales is con-
ducive to a better understanding of faking. In this volume, Ziegler, MacCann, and
Roberts have done an enormous service to personality researchers by systemati-
cally distilling what is known and unknown about faking, and deriving evidence-
based practical recommendations.
S uch an analysis is well past due. Faking is of en seen as a petty nuisance that
need only aggravate those foolhardy enough to use personality assessment in real-
life settings. However, as the editors point out in their concluding chapter, around
a quarter of people will fake in high-stakes settings, in contexts such as job seeking
and making legal claims. Such faking leads to penalties for honest respondents,
poor hiring decisions in industry, and outright fraud in the legal system.
T e contributors to this book demonstrate conclusively the importance of a
theoretical understanding of faking as a guide for practical countermeasures. T e
study of faking can indeed be set within the dominant interactionist paradigm for
personality research. Faking behaviors are powerfully inf uenced by incentives
and other situational factors. Not everyone will fake, however, even when the test
environment seems to issue a siren call to encourage faking. Dispositional dif er-
ences in willingness to fake interact with situational pressures to determine behav-
ior. T e book chapters also explore some of the critical motivational, cognitive,
and emotional factors that may mediate the person–situation interaction.
T is is a book that is both honest and brave in its analysis of faking. Editors and
contributors are honest in lucidly setting out both solidly established research f nd-
ings and areas of uncertainty. On a consensual note, the book f rmly establishes the
prevalence and real-life relevance of faking as well as the key role of motivational
factors. Methodologies for investigating motivational factors through experimen-
tal manipulations of incentives and through sophisticated psychometric techniques
have also been rigorously established. Personality factors including conscientious-
ness and neuroticism are shown to inf uence the willingness to fake.
M ore contentious are possible solutions to faking in high-stakes assessments.
T e reader of this book will be struck by the inventiveness and range of interven-
tions available. Countermeasures based on detecting faking include the overclaim-
ing technique (the respondent falsely recognizes bogus terms and concepts),
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