from “very unlikely” to “very likely,” a person exhibiting this bias will tend to chose one of the endpoints of the scale rather than the more moderate options, such as “likely” or “unlikely.” As with the acquiescence bias, the extremity bias varies across cultures: African Americans and Hispanics are more likely to demonstrate extreme responding than European Americans, whereas East Asians are less likely (Bachman & O’Malley, 1984; Chen, Lee, & Stevenson, 1995; Hui & Triandis, 1989). Question wording can also bias or distort the answers (Schwarz, 2007a). A recent example is a survey reported in the New York Times in which 20% of respondents said that the U.S. government spent too little on “welfare,” but 65% indicated that it spent too little on “assistance to the poor” (See Figure 4.3) (Schneiderman, 2008).
Another response bias may result from the context in which the question is asked. For instance, participants in one study provided different explanations for a mass murder depending on whether the letterhead at the top of the survey was a fictional “Institute for Social Research” or “Institute for Personality Research.” In the “social” condition respondents tended to focus on external or environmental causes, in contrast to the internal or personality factors emphasized in the “personality” condition (Norenzayan & Schwarz, 1999). Such context effects—variations in responding because of survey features encountered prior to answering a question—are also seen when the presence or wording of earlier questions alters responses to later ones (Schwarz, 1999; Toepoel & Couper, 2011; Weijters, Geuens, & Baumgartner, 2013). Researchers need to consider these biases when designing surveys and other self-reports (Schwarz, 1999, 2007a). One additional weakness in self-reports was discussed above: We often do not know how we know what we know; that is, we cannot report on many of our mental processes, even if we can report on the outcome (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977).
Figure 4.3 Do Americans Still Hate Welfare? Depends on How You Ask
Source: Reported in Schneiderman, R. M. (2008, October 30). Do Americans still hate welfare. The New York Times.
Surveys are questionnaires that consist entirely of self-report items that can be administered on paper, computer, online, or during interviews. Survey research has several advantages over other strategies: It is relatively inexpensive, questionnaires are fairly easy to construct and implement, and they can be administered to large numbers of people quickly. As a result, surveys are widely used in social psychological research.
Unfortunately, there are several disadvantages that may outweigh the benefits of doing survey research. The first is that it does not allow for the manipulation of variables that is at the core of experimental research (discussed in Chapter 1). As a consequence, survey findings are only correlational and cannot be used to establish causal relations among variables. Second, there are many social psychological phenomena that cannot be studied using the survey method. For instance, asking people to imagine being in a particular situation—say, in a group of people of a different race—may not replicate the effects of actually being in that group. Finally, the utility of survey research depends upon the sample of individuals who participate in it—responses from Caucasian college students in Boston may not reflect those from Argentinians in Buenos Aires.
Self-Report: Individual’s conscious response to a question or situation
Response Effects: Unintended variations in question responses that stem from procedural aspects or features of the survey instrument, such as the wording of a question or the order of the questions
Acquiescence Bias: Tendency to agree with or say “yes” to questions
Extremity Bias: Tendency to provide answers that are at the extremes of the response options
Context Effects: Variations in responding because of survey features encountered prior to answering a question
Surveys: Questionnaires that consist entirely of self-report items that can be administered on paper, computer, online, or in interviews
Think Again!
1 What are the advantages of self-reports?
2 What are the disadvantages of self-reports?
3 What are the three types of response biases?
Evaluating How We Are Doing
Self-Esteem
Let’s say that you have a pretty good grasp of your self-concept—who you are as a person. How do you feel about the person you are? Do you like your personality, your social skills, your competencies, your relationships? Are there qualities or characteristics that you’d like to change? Your positive or negative evaluation of yourself as a whole is called your self-esteem (MacDonald, 2007; Rosenberg, 1965, 1989). In contrast to self-concept, which is who you are, self-esteem reflects how you feel about who you are (Carmichael, Tsai, Smith, Caprariello, & Reis, 2007; Sharma & Agarwala, 2014). If you have a generally positive view of yourself, then you have relatively high self-esteem. If instead you generally feel bad about yourself, your self-esteem is relatively low.
When laypeople talk about self-esteem, they typically mean global self-esteem, which is an overall evaluation of your whole self that encompasses many narrower self-evaluations confined to particular domains (Crocker & Wolfe, 2001; Schmitt & Allik, 2005). Self-esteem is a multifaceted construct, as you may have different evaluations of yourself regarding various elements of your personality, social skills, and competencies, with more weight given to those that are important to you (Crocker, Luhtanen, Blaine, & Broadnax, 1994; Wagner, Hoppmann, Ram, & Gerstorf, 2015). Perhaps you consider yourself to be a pretty good student, a reliable friend, an unusually skilled musician, and a poor public speaker. If most of your self-concept is associated with how you perform as a musician, for instance, your self-esteem is heavily dependent on how you do in just that one domain. A failure or setback in that domain—such as blowing an audition for a band—can be quite devastating. In contrast, a person whose self-esteem is drawn from many domains—musician, student, long distance runner, parent, and so forth—tends to be more resilient, because any one setback is not as important. Self-esteem based on performance in multiple domains tends to be more stable. Self-esteem stability, in turn, helps predict how we will feel from day to day, as stable self-esteem means that a person’s self-image will not bounce around in response to everyday pleasures and pains, setbacks, and successes.
Not surprisingly, people with high self-esteem also exhibit more self-esteem stability (Seery, Blascovich, Weisbuch, & Vick, 2004; Wagner et al., 2015). Crocker and Wolfe (2001) call the way in which self-esteem draws from multiple domains the contingencies of self-worth (L. E. Park & Maner, 2009). College students tend to derive most of their self-esteem from their academic performance, moral behavior, identity, approval from others, appearance, and religion (Crocker, Luhtanen, Cooper, & Bouvrette, 2003). There may also be genetic influences on both the level and stability of self-esteem (Neiss, Sedikides, & Stevenson, 2006).
Why do people want high self-esteem? One explanation is that high self-esteem feels better than low self-esteem, and people obviously prefer the former. In this sense one can argue that people want a positive self-image or high self-esteem because it feels good. That is of course accurate, but it may only be part of the story. According to the sociometer hypothesis, self-esteem is closely linked to the quality of the relationships we have with other people (Kavanagh, Robins, &
