A Compromise between Self-Enhancement and Honesty: Chinese Self-Evaluations on Social Desirability Scales

In this investigation, 202 Chinese college students were asked to complete the 48-item revised Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale (Crowne & Marlowe, 1960) which contains 32 items from the original version for the purpose of rating item desirability and estimating the percentage of others in general who would behave in the manner described by these items. Analysis indicated (a) nearly all original items keyed in the original direction, which suggests similar fundamental values are prevalent among American and Chinese college students; (b) the distribution of Chinese scores on the 32 items was somewhat positively skewed rather than negatively skewed as in some Western studies of American and Canadian college students. Also, (c) Chinese subjects perceived that they did significantly more desirable and slightly fewer undesirable things than others from which one may infer that Chinese college students tended to give both self-enhancing and honest responses to present good images; however, their need for self-enhancement may take precedence over the need to be honest. (d) Subjects chose to give more honest responses to undesirable items than to desirable ones because the more undesirable items were rated as approximately more neutral than were more desirable ones. Hence, endorsing such undesirable items would not threaten their self-esteem or face. It can be seen that Chinese subjects made an intelligent compromise between self-enhancement and honesty.