Do Survey Respondents Lie? Situated Cognition and Socially Desirable Responding

Presenter: Norbert Schwarz
 University of Michigan

Friday, March 30, 2012, 3:00 PM - 5:00 PM

2205 LeFrak Hall, University of Maryland, College Park

Survey researchers commonly assume that people know what they do, know

what they believe, and can report on it "with candor and accuracy," as
Angus Campbell put it. From this perspective, many findings suggest that
survey respondents are less than "candid".

The best known example is the observation that answers to racial attitude

questions vary as a function of the interviewer's race. Challenging this
interpretation, a large body of social psychological research shows
similar context effects under conditions that do not lend themselves to
this interpretation, including conditions that use implicit attitude
measures, which are not subject to deliberate "faking". From a situated
cognition perspective, such findings reflect that attitude questions
assess context sensitive evaluations that respondents form on the spot,
drawing on information that is accessible at that point in time. The
underlying processes operate in daily life as well as in survey interviews
and reflect the situated nature of human judgment rather than a deliberate
attempt to report a socially desirable answer. I review relevant findings
and discuss their implications for survey measurement.

Discussants: Paul Beatty, NCHS and David Cantor, Westat Please join us for
a reception afterwards.

Please respond to Sarah Gebremicael or Margo Kline at sgebremi@umd.edu or

mkline@survey.umd.edu

For directions see www.jpsm.umd.edu