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Examples Of Social Desirability Bias

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Social Desirability Bias The first bias I will discuss is the social desirability bias. People, accountants included, tend to respond to questions about socially acceptable behavior with an answer that is not true of themselves but rather answer with a behavior that is seen as acceptable by society. For example, when a candidate for a job is asked how important pay is to their decision the candidates respond with moderate answer. This is because it is considered socially unacceptable to take a position with pay as the primary influence. People tend to under state their use of behaviors that are seen as unacceptable socially such as drunk driving or the use of illegal drugs. The opposite is also true. We tend to overestimate our involvement in socially admired behaviors such as giving and helping people who are less fortunate. (Chung & Monroe, 2013) Another factor of social desirability bias is that an individual will tend to overstate their value of ethics when comparing themselves to their peers. A study was done to …show more content…

This is known as the optimism bias. It can have positive and negative results. For example, when someone who has an optimism bias is sick they may not seek needed medical care because of the misperceived optimism. Optimism isn’t always negative as it can be associated with better health and better performance on the job. (Love, Kopec, & Guest, 2015) A study was conducted demonstrating this bias. NFL fans were asked to predict how many wins their favorite team would win and how many teams their least favorite team would win. What they discovered is that fans were overly optimistic about their favorite team’s potential and overly pessimistic about their least favorite team’s potential. This confirmed that optimistic bias exists among fans of the NFL. (Love, Kopec, & Guest,

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