The investigation of the manipulation with scores on amoral dimension of the HEDONICA inventory

Abstract

Faking on Amoral dimension of the HEDONICA personality inventory was incited by the context simulation instructions: fake good (S2), fake bad (S3) and be honest (S1). Simultaneously, under instruction S1, the scores of respondents were measured on the Amoral facets of Self-concept scale (GSC), the Balanced social desirability scale (BIDR) and the cognitive tests of the fluid (IT2, ALF and RM) and the crystallized (AL4, vocabulary and GSN) intelligence, supposed (Morality), or known from the literature, as possible faking determinants. The score differences on Amoral dimension facets were calculated for S2 and for S3 situations using as a baseline the score in S1 situation. The score differences between S3 and S1 situations (abbreviated as FB) were found to be larger than the ones between S2 and S1 situations (abbreviated as FG). This result indicated that a) Amoral is susceptible to faking, and b) in S3, rather than in S2 situation, respondents displayed higher tendency of faking, or in other words, they incline to make worse rather than good presentation of themselves. The Projection facet of Amoral was most sensitive toward faking. These differences are found to be correlated with the Morality dimension of Self- concept scale and the fluid intelligence factor, but not with the dimensions of Social desirability scale in both situation for almost all faking scores on Amoral facets. Only Brutality was not related to the Morality, and Viciousness was not related to the Gf. This indicated that the dimension Morality of the Self-concept scale is far more correlated with the Amoral dimension of the HEDONICA personality scale than with the Social desirability scale.