Impression management & self-deceptive enhancement as facets of a socially desirable response bias is related to self-reported empathic responses; reducing opportunity for IM lowers those responses

“Let Me Show You How Nice I Am”: Impression Management as Bias in Empathic Responses. Claudia Sassenrath. Social Psychological and Personality Science, November 19 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550619884566

Abstract: Past research showed that empathic responses are confounded with social desirability. The present research aims at illuminating this confound. In a first step, it is examined how a measure typically implemented to screen, for response, biases based on social desirability (i.e., the Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding) relate to classical measures of interindividual differences in empathic responses (i.e., the Interpersonal Reactivity Index). Moreover, it is investigated what happens to empathic responses under conditions of reduced opportunity to behave socially desirable. Results of two correlational studies indicate that impression management (IM) as well as self-deceptive enhancement as facets of a socially desirable response bias is related to self-reported empathic responses. Results of an additional experiment show that introducing conditions reducing opportunity for IM lowers empathic responses toward a person in need. Implications for research on self-reported empathy and empathy-induced prosocial behavior are discussed.

Keywords: empathy, social desirability, impression management


General Discussion

The present research indicates that self-reported empathic responses are confounded by social desirability. Specifically, correlational findings provided by Studies 1a and 1b yield that the IRI as one of the most influential self-report measures applied in psychological empathy-research shows substantial associations with the two components of social desirability, SDE and IM. As already outlined above, SDE refers to individuals’ unconscious bias of claiming positive qualities for themselves thus leading to an overly positive self-image (cf. Uziel, 2010). Accordingly, it is plausible that SDE relates to selfreported empathic responses considering that being empathic may boost individuals’ self-esteem. Nevertheless, the main focus of the present research is on IM as component of social desirability since it reflects individuals’ conscious effort to present an overly positive picture to others, thus leading to distortions in self-reports because they decide to lie about certain behavior. Here, experimental evidence provided by Study 2 demonstrates that less empathic feelings regarding a needy target person are reported when individuals believe that they are connected to an apparatus seemingly assessing their true opinions and attitudes. Hence, whereas the correlational findings provided by Studies 1a and 1b do not allow for causal inferences, results from Study 2 show that introducing conditions that reduces the opportunity for managing impressions also reduces empathic responses in a common empathy inductionparadigm. In other words, correlational findings from Studies 1a and 1b and results from the experimental Study 2 provide a coherent picture in that they indicate that IM contributes to empathic responses. Nonetheless, it is for future research to place SDE under scrutiny and determine which of the two components (IM or SDE) plays a greater role in empathic responses.

Comparably, the present research does not provide definite answers with regard to interpretational ambiguities related to the conceptualization of the IM subscale of the BIDR. As mentioned above, recent literature indicates that IM scales do not measure a certain response style based on IM but measure trait-like interpersonal self-control (cf. Mu¨ller & Moshagen, 2019; Uziel, 2010; Zettler et al., 2015). From this perspective, correlational findings of Studies 1a and 1b indicate that interpersonal self-control is related to measures of interindividual differences in empathic responses. Hence, responding empathically seems to be related to being able to control oneself in interpersonal situations. In any case, the observed associations are noteworthy because they suggest that the applied measures share substantial variance. This indicates that whenever we use the IRI as measure of interindividual differences in empathy, we also measure something different (e.g., individuals’ ability to control themselves in social contexts; cf. Uziel, 2010). This has implications for predicting how empathic individuals (identified by high scores in the IRI) may act in situations calling for prosocial behavior, for instance. When adopting the view that the IM subscale primarily measures interpersonal self-control, empathic individuals might show prosocial behavior only if their self-regulatory capacity allows them to do so. When perceiving the IM subscale as primary measure of IM, this also has implications for predicting how empathic individuals may act in these situations. As Study 2 indicates, under conditions of reduced opportunity to manage impressions, individuals show less empathic responses.

Another issue that should be addresses when interpreting findings provided by Study 2 relates to the empathyinduction procedure. Specifically, the empathy-induction procedure applied in this study complies with common procedures of past research (e.g., Batson et al., 1989; Batson et al., 1991; Batson, Chang, Orr, & Rowland, 2002; Cialdini et al., 1997; Cialdini et al., 1987; Pfattheicher et al., 2016; Sassenrath et al., 2017; Sassenrath, Wagner, Keller & Sassenberg, 2018). Recent findings, however, indicate that the instructions usually implemented within this procedure cause differences in empathic feelings, because individuals downregulate their empathic feelings the low-empathy condition and not because their empathic feelings are increased in the high-empathy condition (McAuliffe, Forster, Philippe, & McCullough, 2018).

Although these findings bear significance, particularly regarding the question of adequate control conditions in experimental empathy-paradigms, they do not account for differences found between the different reporting conditions in Study 2. Specifically, across the two different empathy conditions, individuals report less empathic feelings under bogus-pipeline compared to private-reporting conditions. This main effect is not qualified by the empathy manipulation (i.e., no interaction between the two factors occurred), indicating that the processes elicited by the different experimental manipulations work independently from each other.  Notably, across all three studies, the OCQ, although originally introduced as a criterion-related measure self-favoring distortions in self-reports (Paulhus, 2011), did not show reliable associations with self-reported empathic responses nor with the BIDR. This may appear surprising. However, when taking a closer look at literature using the OCQ, it becomes clear that evidence regarding the measures’ potential of controlling for self-presentation biases is at least mixed. Regarding the assessment of distortions in self-reports, some findings indicate that overclaiming is positively associated with social desirability (e.g., Bensch et al., 2019; Paulhus et al., 2003; Tracy et al., 2009). The present research, in contrast, contributes to other findings questioning the use of the OCQ as measure to control for self-presentation biases. Specifically, it seems that overclaiming is unrelated to honest behavior in cheating paradigms or a dictator game (e.g., Mu¨ller & Moshagen, 2019). Instead, overclaiming appears to be related to the hindsight bias (Mu¨ller & Moshagen, 2018).

Another possible limitation of the present research may be that it only relied on self-report regarding empathic responses instead of including measures from other sources such as proxy reports or actual behavioral measures. However, the aim of the present research was to take a first step in systematically decomposing different facets and motivations in empathic responses. To that effect, classical measures used to assess social desirability and empathic responses were administered.  Moreover, an empathy-induction paradigm that mainly assesses empathic feelings and helping behavior using selfreport (see Batson & Shaw, 1991, for an overview, and, Nook, Ong, Morelli, Mitchell, & Zaki, 2016, for an exception) was used, and differing reporting conditions were included to see how this affects results typically observed in this paradigm.

Put differently, the main contribution of the present article is to demonstrate how a measure typically implemented to screen for socially desirable responding (i.e., the BIDR) relates to classical measures of interindividual differences in empathy responses (i.e., the IRI) and how these associations can be interpreted with regard to different motivational facets of empathic responses. Moreover, the present article illustrates what happens to self-reported empathic responses when including experimental conditions fostering honest responding (i.e., a bogus-pipeline condition). Thereby, the present research raises awareness regarding distorting biases in psychological empathy research and, furthermore, may contribute to an enhanced understanding of the motivational forces involved in empathy-induced prosocial behavior (cf. Batson & Shaw, 1991; Cialdini, 1991).