Premium
The Modification of Personality and Lie Scale Scores by Special ‘Honesty’ Instructions
Author(s) -
EYSENCK S. B. G.,
EYSENCK H. J.,
SHAW L.
Publication year - 1974
Publication title -
british journal of social and clinical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.479
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 2044-8260
pISSN - 0007-1293
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8260.1974.tb00876.x
Subject(s) - psychoticism , neuroticism , psychology , extraversion and introversion , honesty , personality , scale (ratio) , eysenck personality questionnaire , clinical psychology , social psychology , big five personality traits , quantum mechanics , physics
Four experiments are reported in which the effects of ordinary instructions on scores on various personality inventory scales and a Lie scale score are compared with scores under ‘honesty’ instructions, i.e. when subjects are explicitly warned about the presence of items which might enable detection of dissimulation. In the first experiment, random samples of British subjects were tested under conditions of low motivation for dissimulation; relatively little in the way of change in neuroticism or psychoticism scores was found, although the L scale scores did change. In the second experiment, samples of black South African subjects were tested under conditions of high motivation for dissimulation; quite considerable changes in neuroticism, psychoticism and L scale scores were found. In the third experiment groups of prisoners were employed; here ‘honesty’ instructions produced a sizable change in N and L scores. In all three experiments, the correlation between L and the pathological scores bore out the previously found rule that degree of motivation for dissimulation in a group is positively correlated with the size of these correlations (which are, of course, in the negative direction). It was concluded that in conditions which are likely to provide high motivation for dissimulation (or are actually shown to provide such motivation by virtue of the high correlation between L scale and the pathological scales), it may be useful to employ ‘honesty’ instructions in order to obtain scores on the personality scales nearer to the levels which would have been achieved under low motivating conditions. Extraversion scores were not influenced by either motivating conditions or differences in instructions. In the fourth experiment, normal subjects were given ‘fake good’ instructions, and it was observed that increases in E and L were balanced by decreases in N and P; the expected increase in NL and PL correlations was also found.