Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-tj2md Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-17T01:43:16.937Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Self-deception, social desirability, and psychopathology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Antonio Preti  and
Paola Miotto
Antonio Preti
Affiliation:
Centro Medico Genneruxi, Cagliari, Italy, and Chair of Clinical Psychology, University of Cagliari, Italy. apreti@tin.it
Paola Miotto
Affiliation:
Department of Mental Health, ULSS 7, Conegliano (TV), 31015, Italy. miottopaola@yahoo.it
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Social desirability can be conceived as a proxy for self-deception, as it involves a positive attribution side and a denial side. People with mental disorders have lower scores on measures of social desirability, which could depend on cognitive load caused by symptoms. This suggests that self-deception is an active strategy and not merely a faulty cognitive process.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , February 2011 , pp. 37
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Crowne, D. P. & Marlowe, D. (1960) A new scale of social desirability independent of psychopathology. Journal of Consulting Psychology 24:1397–403.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Crowne, D. P. & Marlowe, D. (1964) The approval motive. Wiley.Google Scholar
Gallese, V. (2007) Before and below ‘theory of mind’: embodied simulation and the neural correlates of social cognition. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences 362:659–69.Google Scholar
Grafton, S. T. (2009) Embodied cognition and the simulation of action to understand others. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1156:97–117.Google Scholar
Lane, R. D., Meringas, K. R., Schwartz, G. E., Huang, S. S. & Prusoff, B. A. (1990) Inverse relationship between defensiveness and lifetime prevalence of psychiatric disorder. American Journal of Psychiatry 147:573–78.Google ScholarPubMed
Miotto, P., De Coppi, M., Frezza, M., Rossi, M. & Preti, A. (2002) Social desirability and eating disorders. A community study of an Italian school-aged sample. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavica 105:372–77.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Miotto, P. & Preti, A. (2008) Suicide ideation and social desirability among school-aged young people. Journal of Adolescence 31:519–33.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Paulhus, D. L. (1991) Measurement and control of response bias. In: Measures of personality and social psychological attitudes, vol. 1, ed. Robinson, J. P., Shaver, P. R. & Wrightsman, L. S., pp. 17–59. Academic Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Preti, A. & Miotto, P. (2006) Mental disorders, evolution and inclusive fitness. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 29:419–20.Google Scholar
Preti, A., Vellante, M., Baron-Cohen, S., Zucca, G., Petretto, D. R. & Masala, C. (2010) The Empathy Quotient: A cross-cultural comparison of the Italian version. Cognitive Neuropsychiatry 2010 August 24:1–21 (DOI: 10.1080/13546801003790982).Google Scholar
Ramanaiah, N. V., Schill, T. & Leung, L. S. (1977) A test of the hypothesis about the two dimensional nature of the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale. Journal of Research in Personality 11:251–59.Google Scholar
Rizzolatti, G. & Craighero, L. (2004) The mirror-neuron system. Annual Reviews of Neuroscience 27:169–92.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Stevens, J. R. & Hauser, M. D. (2004) Why be nice? Psychological constraints on the evolution of cooperation. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8:60–65.Google Scholar
Stich, S. (1990) The fragmentation of reason. MIT Press.Google Scholar
Trivers, R. (1976/2006) Foreword. In: The selfish gene, Dawkins, R., pp. 19–20. Oxford University Press. (Original work published in 1976).Google Scholar
Trivers, R. (2000) The elements of a scientific theory of self-deception. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 907:114–31.Google Scholar