Personality Predictors of Extreme Response Style

Abstract

Extreme response style (ERS) refers to the tendency to overuse the endpoints of Likert-type scales. This study examined the extent to which ERS is accounted for by measures of personality, specifically, intolerance of ambiguity, simplistic thinking, and decisiveness. One hundred and sixteen pairs of undergraduate students and one of their respective peers completed a battery of questionnaires assessing these personality measures, alongside three measures of extreme responding. Results indicate that peer ratings of intolerance of ambiguity and simplistic thinking interact with the primary participant's time spent on the survey to predict the primary participant's extreme responding. Thus, those who quickly complete surveys and are intolerant of ambiguity or are simplistic thinkers are most likely to exhibit ERS. These results have implications not only for surveys using rating scales, but also illustrate how epistemic personality factors more generally influence the processing of new information.Extreme response style (ERS) refers to the tendency to disproportionately favor the endpoints or extreme categories of ordinal response or Likert-type scales, irrespective of particular item content. ERS can be described as the opposite of central tendency and differs from other response styles such as acquiescence (yea-saying) and social desirability in that most research has found this style remains relatively consistent across differing construct measures over time

Policy experts' propensity to change their opinion along Delphi rounds

“…Nevertheless, it is to be noted that individual difference variables that have been linked with extreme response behaviour are numerous and results from various studies concerning these links have been found to be mixed and inconclusive (Naemi et al, 2009). Thus, although extreme responses have been found to relate positively with confidence (Allport and Hartman, 1925) and decisiveness (Naemi et al, 2009), there can be other factors as well. Especially Policy Delphi studies desire to cover the maximum controversy existing in a given topic and thus studying the extreme responses and their link with opinion shift would be ideal in these studies, revealing thus the "true" disagreements upon the desirable future policy.…”

“…The self-rating approach, nevertheless, conflicts with confidence as panellists with higher confidence can be expected to rate their knowledge on the topic higher than the panellists with lower confidence irrespective of their true level of knowledge. Confidence in turn, has been linked for a long time already with extreme opinions (Allport and Hartman, 1925) and on Likert scales, extreme response behaviour means the (disproportional) favouring of the endpoints on the rating scale (Naemi et al, 2009). Nevertheless, it is to be noted that individual difference variables that have been linked with extreme response behaviour are numerous and results from various studies concerning these links have been found to be mixed and inconclusive (Naemi et al, 2009).…”

“…Confidence in turn, has been linked for a long time already with extreme opinions (Allport and Hartman, 1925) and on Likert scales, extreme response behaviour means the (disproportional) favouring of the endpoints on the rating scale (Naemi et al, 2009). Nevertheless, it is to be noted that individual difference variables that have been linked with extreme response behaviour are numerous and results from various studies concerning these links have been found to be mixed and inconclusive (Naemi et al, 2009). Thus, although extreme responses have been found to relate positively with confidence (Allport and Hartman, 1925) and decisiveness (Naemi et al, 2009), there can be other factors as well.…”

Integration and Domain Specificity of Response Styles: Towards a Better Understanding of a General Response Style

“…Regarding self-regulation, ERS was positively related to promotion regulation focus and MRS to prevention regulation (Cabooter, 2010). In the cognition domain, ERS was positively associated with intolerance of ambiguity (Naemi, Beal, & Payne, 2009), suggesting that respondents' need to evaluate enhances the use of ERS. Krosnick (1991) argued that respondents avoiding cognitive efforts in survey responding tend to utilize ARS as a satisficing strategy.…”

Development of a New Scale to Measure Ambiguity Tolerance in Veterinary Students

“…Other biases such as socially desirable responding and extreme response bias are more challenging to correct for. Extreme response bias is interesting in the context of this study because intolerance of ambiguity (as well as other factors such as cultural background) have been reported to correlate with extreme response style 48 . Measures of extreme response styles have been proposed in the literature 49 and future work could attempt to evaluate the way in which extreme response styles may influence self-report scales of ambiguity tolerance.…”