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The hypothesis was tested that subjects fake personality tests by enacting a specific social role, rather than by responding in terms of personality constructs, and that such role faking cannot be detected by validity scales. In Experiment 1, male undergraduates were able to reproduce without detection the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) profile of an air force officer but not that of a creative artist. The latter was attributed to the subjects' inaccurate conception of the artist role. However, when subjects in a second experiment were given an accurate conception of the artist role, they succeeded in reproducing the MMPI artist profile without detection as well. The results are interpreted as favoring the hypothesis, provided that the subjects possess an accurate conception of the role to be simulated.

The present paper considers the politeness of forms of address in terms of Brown & Levinson's (1987) theory of politeness. We present a conceptual analysis of the elements of politeness for six kinds of nominal address exchange and of the politeness expected for different categories of social relationship. These theoretical values are then compared to the politeness of address exchanges collected in a series of previous studies. The results of both the conceptual and empirical analyses are compatible with Brown & Levinson's assumption that negative politeness outweighs positive politeness. However, it appears that the formula for deriving the weightiness of face-threatening acts and hence politeness requires revisions that would give greater weight to status than to solidarity and incorporate the interaction of status and solidarity. We discuss the plausibility of the claim that negative politeness is more polite than positive politeness and consider the implications of our results for understanding the expression of solidarity and the relationship of affect to politeness.

We discuss the emerging turn to discursive social psychology as an alternative to experimental social psychology. We note that the barriers to change are rooted in the history of the discipline, in the failure of researchers to recognize the distinction between movements and actions and in their reluctance to switch from positivist to post-positivist criteria. We outline the tenets of discursive psychology and of its associated method, discourse analysis. Illustrations of discourse analysis are drawn primarily from a recent study of date rape. Throughout, we emphasize the centrality of discourse in social life and the definition of the social being as Homo loquens.

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