American college students’ and children’s scores on two measures of the need for social approval closely follow changes in the state of the larger society, decreasing significantly from 1958 to 1980 and leveling off between 1980 and 2001 (total n = 36,004 across 203 samples of college students responding to the Marlowe–Crowne Social Desirability scale; total n = 4741 across 38 samples of children responding to the Children’s Social Desirability Questionnaire). Need for social approval correlates with positive social trends such as a low divorce rate, low crime rate, and low unemployment rate. However, need for social approval does not correlate over time with changes in anxiety and self-esteem, suggesting that these birth cohort trends are not due to shifts in response styles.
Bob is careful about how he dresses, rarely talks about his bad qualities, and tries to present himself in a good light. In other words, he wants other people to approve of him. Mike, in contrast, dresses poorly, readily admits to his faults, and feels no need to shape his behavior to make a good impression. Thus Mike he does not much care what other people think of him. What is the difference between these two men? Bob is high in the need for social approval, whereas Mike is low in this trait.
Over the past forty years, the Marlowe–Crowne Social Desirability Scale (MCSD; Crowne and Marlowe, 1960 and Crowne and Marlowe, 1964) has been cited in over 3600 articles. The authors of the MCSD describe the scale as a measure of the need for social approval, which can be considered a quantifiable personality trait. For example, people who scored high on the MCSD displayed obedience to authority (Marlowe & Crowne, 1961), conformed in an Asch-like judgment paradigm (Strickland & Crowne, 1962), and anchored their social behavior in cultural norms (Horton, Marlowe, & Crowne, 1963). Overall, they were characterized by “conventional, polite, acceptable behavior” (Crowne & Marlowe, 1964, p. 39) and shaped their behavior around “conventional, even stereotyped, cultural norms” (p. 85). Paulhus (1991) describes those who score high on scales like the MCSD as presenting “a socially conventional, dependable persona” (p. 21).
For much of its history, the MCSD has been used as a measure of socially desirable responding (SDR). There has been much debate about what SDR scales actually measure. Many of these scales were originally intended to measure the “response bias” of trying to look good to others (Paulhus, 1991). However, several recent studies have found that using SDR scales to “correct” personality test scores does not improve results (Ellingson et al., 1999, Ones et al., 1996 and Piedmont et al., 2000). In many cases, it undermines validity because the tendency toward SDR may be considered a personality trait in and of itself (McCrae & Costa, 1983). Thus this paper will instead define the MCSD as a measure of the need for social approval, just as its authors originally labeled it.
