Use of mouse-tracking software to detect faking-good behavior on personality questionnaires: an explorative study

Abstract

the aim of the present study was to explore whether kinematic indicators could improve the detection of subjects demonstrating faking-good behaviour when responding to personality questionnaires. one hundred and twenty volunteers were randomly assigned to one of four experimental groups (honest unspeeded, faking-good unspeeded, honest speeded, and faking-good speeded). Participants were asked to respond to the MMPI-2 underreporting scales (L, K, S) and the PPI-R Virtuous Responding (VR) scale using a computer mouse. The collected data included T-point scores on the L, K, S, and VR scales; response times on these scales; and several temporal and spatial mouse parameters. these data were used to investigate the presence of significant differences between the two manipulated variables (honest vs. faking-good; speeded vs. unspeeded). The results demonstrated that T-scores were significantly higher in the faking-good condition relative to the honest condition; however, fakinggood and honest respondents showed no statistically significant differences between the speeded and unspeeded conditions. Concerning temporal and spatial kinematic parameters, we observed mixed results for different scales and further investigations are required. The most consistent finding, albeit with small observed effects, regards the L scale, in which faking-good respondents took longer to respond to stimuli and outlined wider mouse trajectories to arrive at the given response.One of the main limitations of the use of self-report questionnaires to assess personality is that such tests are vulnerable to faking behavior 1 -that is, the tendency to deliberately distort one's responses in order to fulfil personal goals 2 . In one form of faking, respondents exaggerate or create symptoms to emphasize their psychological suffering and discomfort (faking-bad); in another, respondents present themselves in a particularly favourable fashion, emphasizing their desirable traits and rejecting their undesirable ones (faking-good). Faking behaviour is widespread in many contexts, with alarming estimates of prevalence (e.g., 30-50% in personnel selection 3 and up to 30% in forensic settings 4,5 ). Many studies have focused on faking-bad behaviour and developed tools to facilitate its detection; such tools include the Structured Interview of Reported Symptoms-2 (SIRS-2) 6 , the Structured Inventory of Malingered Symptomatology (SIMS) 7 , and the Inventory of Problems-29 8 . Faking-bad behaviour has received more research attention 9,10 perhaps because its welfare/social costs (in terms of, e.g. insurance compensation) are more easily recognizable; thus, the literature on the subject is not as rich and instruments to identify faking-good behaviour are lacking; for this reason, the present study focused on faking-good behavior, specifically.Analysis of validity scales is one of the most commonly used methods to detect fakers. Validity scales were designed to gather information on the validity and interpretability of self-report questionnaires by exploring the ...

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