On the Association Between the Self-Control Scale and Social Desirability Measures: A Meta-Analysis and Systematic Review

This review examined the relationship between a popular self-report measure of self-control, the Self-Control Scale, and its association with measures of social desirability. Although the original study reported substantial correlations between this scale and measures of social desirability (rs = .54-.60), it is not clear whether this reported association is strong and robust and, if so, how such an association should be interpreted. We conducted three lines of analyses to address these questions, while acknowledging the existence of two contrasting viewpoints on social desirability: (a) a stylistic view (social desirability as a response bias) and (b) a substantive view (social desirability as a personality trait). Our goal was not to adjudicate between these two perspectives, but to document the current state of the literature and flesh out the implications of our findings from each perspective. First, a meta-analysis including 81 studies with a total of 24,282 participants demonstrated a substantial correlation between the Self-Control Scale and social desirability, r = .41, 95% Confidence Interval = [.38, .44]. After correcting for unreliability, the estimated correlation was r = .54 [.50, .57]. Second, a qualitative analysis indicated that, among the meta-analyzed studies, social desirability scales were predominantly used as a measure of response bias and that the alternative substantive view was seldom acknowledged. Finally, simulation results from a commonality analysis demonstrated that the sizable correlation between the Self-Control Scale and social desirability could pose methodological and interpretational challenges under some circumstances. These results call for further investigations into the nature of the overlapping variance between the Self-Control Scale and social desirability.