The Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale (M-C) is a widely used psychological measure of social desirability. Developed by John Crowne and Donald Marlowe (1960), the M-C is a 33-item true/false questionnaire designed to measure the respondent’s tendency to present themselves in a socially desirable manner. The M-C has been used in a variety of research settings, including personality, health, and clinical psychology.
The M-C measures an individual’s self-presentational tendencies, which are the tendencies of an individual to present themselves in a manner that will best reflect positively on their image. Specifically, the M-C assesses socially desirable responding, which is the tendency to present oneself as more socially desirable than is actually the case (Crowne & Marlowe, 1960). By using true/false items, the M-C measures the respondent’s tendency to agree with statements that reflect behavior and attitudes that are generally viewed as socially desirable.
The M-C has demonstrated high reliability and validity across a variety of research settings and populations. Internal consistency reliability has been found to be high, ranging from .76 to .93 (Crowne & Marlowe, 1960; Paulhus, 1991). In addition, the M-C has been found to have good discriminant validity, with low correlations with measures of neuroticism and to be unrelated to measures of cognitive ability (Crowne & Marlowe, 1960).
The M-C has been used to study a variety of psychological phenomena, including the relationship between social desirability and self-esteem (Paulhus & John, 1991), the effects of impression management on the accuracy of self-reports (Borkenau & Liebler, 1992), and the impact of social desirability on test performance (Kling & Johnson, 1994).
In conclusion, the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale is a widely used and reliable measure of social desirability. It has demonstrated good reliability and validity in a variety of research settings and has been used to study a variety of psychological phenomena.
References
Borkenau, P., & Liebler, A. (1992). Impression management in personality assessment: A comparison of self-report and peer-report data. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63(6), 881–893. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.63.6.881
Crowne, D. P., & Marlowe, D. (1960). A new scale of social desirability independent of psychopathology. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 24(4), 349–354. doi:10.1037/h0047358
Kling, K. C., & Johnson, B. T. (1994). The impact of social desirability on test performance: A meta-analysis. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 54(5), 838–849. doi:10.1177/0013164494054005007
Paulhus, D. L. (1991). Measurement and control of response bias. In J. Robinson, P. Shaver, & L. Wrightsman (Eds.), Measures of personality and social psychological attitudes (pp. 17–59). San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Paulhus, D. L., & John, O. P. (1991). Accuracy and bias in self-perception: Individual differences in self-enhancement and self-verification. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60(6), 981–993. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.60.6.981