EVALUATION APPREHENSION, SOCIAL DESIRABILITY, AND THE INTERPRETATION OF TEST CORRELATIONS
- 1 January 1979
- journal article
- Published by Scientific Journal Publishers Ltd in Social Behavior and Personality: an international journal
- Vol. 7 (2) , 193-197
- https://doi.org/10.2224/sbp.1979.7.2.193
Abstract
This paper investigates the relationship between the concepts of social desirability and evaluation apprehension. The Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale and the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale were administered to 63 Harvard and Radcliffe students. As predicted, there was a moderate negative correlation between social desirability and manifest anxiety in the (anonymous) high evaluation apprehension condition (r = −0.35, p = 0.05); and a substantially reduced correlation in the (anonymous) low evaluation apprehension condition (r = −0.04). Nonanonymous subjects also had a lower mean score on the Talyor Manifest Anxiety Scale than did anonymous subjects. The results demonstrate a link between evaluation apprehension and social desirability, and indicate the importance of the nature of the testing situation in clinical or applied settings.Keywords
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