Controlling social desirability bias

Ronald B. Larson

Social desirability bias can change the results from marketing experiments and surveys. However, there are few illustrations that show how serious social desirability bias can be.

When marketing researchers survey consumers, they may discover that some respondents provide answers that differ from their actual attitudes, values, or behaviors. If subjects change their answers for impression management (to look better to others), self-deception (to feel good about themselves), or identity definition, social desirability bias (SDB) occurs. Impression management can occur when researchers interact with subjects (e.g., face-to-face surveys) while the other sources of SDB can occur in all types of surveys. This bias can result from social norms that suggest positive or negative answers to questions are socially preferred. It has affected experiments and surveys for many...

WARC subscribers can sign in to keep reading

Not a subscriber?

Schedule your live demo with our team today

WARC helps you to plan, create and deliver more effective marketing

  • Prove your case and back-up your idea

  • Get expert guidance on strategic challenges

  • Tackle current and emerging marketing themes

We’re long-term subscribers to WARC and it’s a tool we use extensively. We use it to source case studies and best practice for the purposes of internal training, as well as for putting persuasive cases to clients. In compiling a recent case for long-term, sustained investment in brand, we were able to support key marketing principles with numerous case studies sourced from WARC. It helped bring what could have been a relatively dry deck to life with recognisable brand successes from across a broad number of categories. It’s incredibly efficient to have such a wealth of insight in one place.

Insights Team
Bray Leino

You’re in good company

We work with 80% of Forbes' most valuable brands* and 80% of the world's top top-of-the-class agencies.

* Top 10 brands