Socially Desirable Response Tendencies in Survey Research
Abstract
Socially desirable responding (SDR) has been of long-standing interest to the field of marketing. Unfortunately, the construct has not always been well understood by marketing researchers. The authors provide a review of the SDR literature organized around three key issues—the conceptualization and measurement of SDR; the nomological constellation of personality traits, values, sociodemographics, and cultural factors associated with SDR; and the vexing issue of substance versus style in SDR measures. The authors review the current “state of the literature,” identify unresolved issues, and provide new empirical evidence to assess the generalizability of existing knowledge, which is disproportionately based on U.S. student samples, to a global context. The new evidence is derived from a large international data set involving 12,424 respondents in 26 countries on four continents.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Claims the paper makes
Claims other papers make about this one
Each is checked against this paper’s own text: does it say what the citing paper says it does?
Respondents may view consciousness positively, thus preferentially attributing it to entities, including AI, when uncertain to provide what they perceive as a socially agreeable, expected answer.
“Respondents may also view consciousness positively (Moncoucy et al., 2025), thus preferentially attributing it to entities, including AI, when uncertain to provide what they perceive as a socially agreeable, expected answer (Steenkamp et al., 2010).”
From Are Attributions of Consciousness to AI Chatbots Epistemically Innocent? (2026) · cites this paper as Steenkamp et al., 2010
Cites
Schwartz, S. H. (1992) · Advances in Experimental Social Psychology · doi:10.1016/s0065-2601(08)60281-6 · Cited by 14,619 · see citing works
Reflective and Impulsive Determinants of Social Behavior
Strack, F., & Deutsch, R. (2004) · Personality and Social Psychology Review · doi:10.1207/s15327957pspr0803_1 · Cited by 3,984 · see citing works
Sensitive questions in surveys.
Tourangeau, R., & Yan, T. (2007) · Psychological Bulletin · doi:10.1037/0033-2909.133.5.859 · Cited by 3,057 · see citing works
Thinking too much: Introspection can reduce the quality of preferences and decisions.
Wilson, T. D., & Schooler, J. W. (1991) · Journal of Personality and Social Psychology · doi:10.1037/0022-3514.60.2.181 · Cited by 1,417 · see citing works
Flagged first, then by citations
Cited by
Sorted by citations
Sources of method bias in social science research and recommendations on how to control it
Podsakoff, P. M., MacKenzie, S. B., & Podsakoff, N. P. (2012) · Annual Review of Psychology · doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-120710-100452 · Cited by 15,744 · see citing works
Common Method Bias in Marketing: Causes, Mechanisms, and Procedural Remedies
MacKenzie, S. B., & Podsakoff, P. M. (2012) · Journal of Retailing · doi:10.1016/j.jretai.2012.08.001 · Cited by 3,051 · see citing works
Alexandrov, A., Lilly, B., & Babakus, E. (2013) · Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science · doi:10.1007/s11747-012-0323-4 · Cited by 448 · see citing works
Planning and Conducting Experimental Advertising Research and Questionnaire Design
Geuens, M., & De Pelsmacker, P. (2017) · Journal of Advertising · doi:10.1080/00913367.2016.1225233 · Cited by 234 · see citing works
Bui, H. T. (2026) · Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing · doi:10.1108/jrim-02-2025-0066 · Cited by 34 · see citing works
Are Attributions of Consciousness to AI Chatbots Epistemically Innocent?
Peters, U. (2026) · Minds and Machines · doi:10.1007/s11023-026-09795-8
- Authors
- Steenkamp, J.-B. E. M., De Jong, M. G., & Baumgartner, H.
- Affiliations
- University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (US)
- Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University
- Pennsylvania State University (US)
- Corresponding author
- Steenkamp, Jan-Benedict E.M.
- Baumgartner, Hans
- Venue
- Journal of Marketing Research
- Publisher
- SAGE Publications
- Published
- 2010-04
- Volume
- 47
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 199-214
- ISSN
- 0022-2437 (ISSN-L)
- 1547-7193
- OpenAlex
- W2050709690
- Cited by
- 444
- References
- 4
- Citations by year
- 2026: 35 · 2025: 30 · 2024: 34 · 2023: 36 · 2022: 37 · 2021: 49 · 2020: 30 · 2019: 21 · 2018: 28 · 2017: 17 · 2016: 29 · 2015: 24 · 2014: 13 · 2013: 24 · 2012: 21
- FWCI
- 62.82
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- Journal of Marketing Research (publishedVersion)
- EUR Research Repository (Erasmus University Rotterdam) (publishedVersion)
- EUR Research Repository (Erasmus University Rotterdam) (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Survey Methodology and Nonresponse
- Physical Sciences › Mathematics › Statistics and Probability › Survey Sampling and Estimation Techniques
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Management Science and Operations Research › Psychometric Methodologies and Testing
- Keywords
- social desirability bias, personality traits, values, sociodemographic factors, cultural factors, cross-national comparison, student samples
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
