Faking in Interest Measurement: A Social-Psychological Perspective

This study proposes a social-psychological hypothesis of test faking which postulates that faking involves the enacting of a social role appropriate to the given testing situation. Successful faking depends on favorable motivation, accurate conception of the role involved, adequate role-taking skills, and the presence of role-relevant cues in the test. A series of interrelated experiments, using primarily the SVIB and MMPI as dependent measures, are reviewed. Subtle manipulations of the test-taking environment, designed to induce subjects to adopt given social roles, produced substantial role-specific changes in test scores, or, successful faking. Such faking was not detected by the validity scales of the MMPI. The conclusion is that test faking in terms of role enactment represents the test-taker's general approach to testing situations, with success depending especially on the presence of role-relevant cues in the test and on the test-taker's accurate conception of the role to be enacted. Positive implications of the findings and of the hypothesis are noted.