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Applicants' Strategic Use of Extreme or Midpoint Responses When Faking Personality Tests

Faking, the intentional distortion of answers to personality tests, is likely a complex process. In particular, participants in previous research have mentioned that they used different kind of strategies to appear more hirable, including systematically more extreme or more midpoint responses. However, quantitative evidence is still lacking. An experiment was conducted in which 327 students (173 women, 153 men, 1 not indicated; M age = 22.1 yr., SD=2.8) were randomly assigned to two groups. Hypothetical job advertisements primed the participants into believing that the hiring company preferred a person with either a “strong” (Strong Character group) or a “well-balanced” character (Well-balanced Character group). The participants filled out 40 items that were chosen from four established questionnaires as neither socially desirable nor undesirable. The responses to these items were used to calculate two extreme response measures and one midpoint response measure. The Strong Character group used extreme scores more often than the Well-balanced Character group (and the midpoint scores less often), independently of mean differences. This suggests that fakers use more sophisticated strategies than is often assumed.