SOCIALLY DESIRABLE RESPONDING AND LATENCY TIME IN THE CONTEXT OF SELECTION PROCESS FOR EMPLOYMENT

Socially desirable responding is defined as a systematic tendency of giving overly positive self-evaluations and is often manifested during a selection process. The aim of this study was to explore whether there was a difference in giving socially desirable responses and in the speed of responding between job applicants and a control group of subjects. The sample comprised 252 participants altogether. The experimental group encompassed 94 candidates applying for a job through a professional social network (www.linkedin.com) and a local website (www.bika.net) where available jobs were advertised, while in the control group there were 158 participants, who were answering the same questions as the job applicants. The web questionnaire consisted of 36 items from the Eysenck's Lie-Scale and Paulhus's Self-deception scale. Multivariate analysis of variance established that job applicants gave more socially desirable responses and responded slower than the control group participants. The results obtained by discriminant analysis suggested that latency time might be used as an indicator of socially desirable responding. Implications and suggestions for future research were also considered.