Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (BIDR)

Abstract

The Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (BIDR), developed predominantly by Delroy L. Paulhus, represents one of the most widely utilized and empirically validated psychometric instruments for the assessment of social desirability bias in personality and psychological evaluation. Rooted in the bifurcated conceptualization of socially desirable responding (SDR), the BIDR operationalizes two distinct cognitive and behavioral dimensions: Self-Deceptive Positivity, historically termed Self-Deceptive Enhancement (SDE), which reflects an unconscious, honest yet overly favorable cognitive distortion of the self-concept; and Impression Management (IM), which captures the conscious, deliberate dissimulation and behavioral alteration aimed at projecting a morally upright, norm-abiding persona to external audiences. Form 40 of Version 6 (BIDR-6) traditionally incorporates balanced positive and negative indicators assessed via a 7-point Likert-type continuum anchored from 1 (“Not True”) through 4 (“Somewhat True”) to 7 (“Very True”). Psychometrically, the instrument demonstrates robust internal consistency, with coefficient alphas typically spanning .68 to .80 for SDE, .75 to .86 for IM, and exceeding .83 when combined into a composite SDR index. Confirmatory and exploratory factor analyses consistently sustain a distinct two-factor orthogonal or weakly oblique latent structure across clinical, student, and organizational populations. In applied and clinical assessment environments, the BIDR serves critical functions as both a statistical covariate to control for response distortion and an independent psychological index of ego enhancement, resilience, and conscious deception.

Keywords

Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding, BIDR, Socially Desirable Responding, Self-Deceptive Enhancement, Impression Management, Response Bias, Psychometrics, Lie Scales, Delroy Paulhus, Self-Deception

Authors

The principal developer and psychometric architect of the Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding is Delroy L. Paulhus, Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of British Columbia (UBC), Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Dr. Paulhus has extensively investigated personality traits, dark personalities (such as the Dark Triad), and response styles, formulating several successive iterations of the instrument (culminating in BIDR Version 6). Early conceptual foundations were derived in collaboration with and building upon the antecedent paradigms of Harold A. Sackeim and Ruben C. Gur (University of Pennsylvania), whose 1978 Self-Deception Questionnaire (SDQ) and Other-Deception Questionnaire (ODQ) framed the dual-component model of positive dissimulation.

Purpose

The primary objective of the Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (BIDR) is the systematic detection, differentiation, and statistical control of socially desirable responding across diverse psychodiagnostic, organizational, and experimental contexts. For decades, self-report inventories across clinical psychology, personality assessment, and organizational selection have suffered from the contaminating influence of response distortion. Individuals routinely modify their responses either out of a nonconscious need to preserve an idealized self-image or via tactical manipulation calculated to attain social rewards, employment opportunities, or favorable forensic appraisals.

The BIDR was engineered to resolve a critical psychometric dilemma: traditional social desirability scales, such as the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale (MCSD) or Edwards Social Desirability Scale, routinely conflated non-conscious ego-defense mechanisms with overt, purposeful prevarication. By segregating these behavioral tendencies into Self-Deceptive Enhancement (SDE) and Impression Management (IM), the BIDR allows investigators to isolate whether high scores on target personality measures stem from genuine, resilient psychological adjustment or instrumental dissimulation. In research paradigms, it is frequently embedded as a screening tool or statistical control (e.g., entered as a covariate in hierarchical multiple regression or structural equation modeling). In clinical and forensic settings, elevated IM scores indicate overt faking good or malingering of adjustment, whereas elevated SDE scores shed light on rigid psychological defenses, overconfidence, and narcissistic vulnerability.

Psychological Construct

The BIDR models socially desirable responding not as a unitary artifact, but as a dual-component construct characterized by distinct etiologies, cognitive mechanisms, and behavioral manifestations.

Self-Deceptive Enhancement (SDE)

Self-Deceptive Enhancement is conceptualized as an uncalculated, honest cognitive distortion wherein the respondent genuinely endorses exaggeratedly positive beliefs regarding their intellectual capabilities, decision-making skills, rationality, and psychological invulnerability. Unlike pathological confabulation, SDE reflects an ego-enhancing cognitive filter. Individuals exhibiting high levels of SDE do not perceive themselves as untruthful; rather, they demonstrate systematic overconfidence, claiming infallible judgment (e.g., “My first impressions of people usually turn out to be right”), exceptional cognitive self-awareness (“I always know why I like things”), and total agency over existential circumstances (“I am fully in control of my own fate”). SDE is fundamentally intrapsychic, functioning as an internal buffer against distress, cognitive dissonance, and anxiety.

Impression Management (IM)

In contrast to SDE, Impression Management represents an interpersonal, conscious behavioral adaptation characterized by deliberate falsification and self-presentation tailored to a specific audience. The IM construct captures intentional social conformity, adherence to normative standards, and overt denial of universally common minor transgressions. High IM scorers systematically present themselves as moral paragons who never engage in common antisocial or self-serving behaviors. Statements operationalizing IM involve verifiable social actions, such as absolute law compliance (“I always obey laws, even if I’m unlikely to get caught”), immaculate personal honesty (“I never cover up my mistakes”), and the complete absence of gossip or illicit reading material. Whereas SDE is relatively stable across observational contexts, IM fluctuates dramatically depending on situational visibility, perceived evaluation scrutiny, and demand characteristics.

Theoretical Framework

The theoretical framework underlying the BIDR represents a major evolution from classical psychoanalytic defense theory to modern cognitive-personality psychology. Harold Sackeim and Ruben Gur (1978) initially framed self-deception within psychodynamic models of repression, positing that individuals deceive themselves to shield conscious awareness from anxiety-provoking, socially unacceptable impulses (such as Oedipal anxieties, hostility toward parents, or taboo sexual thoughts). Their early Self-Deception Questionnaire was heavily saturated with psychoanalytic content.

When Delroy L. Paulhus (1984, 1988) refined the paradigm, he transitioned the theoretical locus from psychoanalytic ego defense to cognitive ego enhancement and social evaluation theory. Drawing on the empirical work of Shelley Taylor and Jonathon Brown (1988) on positive illusions, Paulhus posited that self-deceptive positivity is not inherently pathological; rather, normal human psychological adjustment is intrinsically intertwined with mild to moderate self-aggrandizing illusions of control, invulnerability, and optimism. Thus, the modern SDE subscale reflects an epistemic style marked by dogmatic certainty and self-reinforcing cognitive appraisals.

Concurrently, the Impression Management dimension rests upon Erving Goffman’s (1959) sociological dramaturgical theory and Barry Schlenker’s (1980) impression management framework. According to this perspective, human beings actively manage social facades to regulate external evaluations, maintain social standing, and maximize social and material gains. When completing self-evaluative assessments, individuals selectively deploy claims of moral purity and compliance to satisfy perceived institutional or interpersonal expectations.

Validity

Extensive psychometric investigations have established robust construct, convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity for the BIDR across international settings.

Convergent and Criterion Validity

The overall 40-item composite score exhibits high concurrent validity with established unidimensional desirable responding instruments, demonstrating strong correlations with the Marlowe-Crowne Social Desirability Scale (r = .71) and Jacobson et al.’s Multidimensional Social Desirability Inventory (r = .80). At the subscale level, SDE correlates positively with traditional measures of psychological coping and defense, such as Byrne’s Repression-Sensitization Scale (r = .51), the Reversal subscale of Ihilevich and Gleser’s Defense Mechanisms Inventory (r = .34), and positive reappraisal coping strategies on Folkman and Lazarus’s Ways of Coping questionnaire (r = .44). In experimental paradigms, high SDE respondents consistently display pronounced self-serving attributions following laboratory failure tasks, inflated illusions of control, and hindsight bias.

Conversely, the IM subscale converges strongly with classic clinical and personality “lie” and defensiveness indexes, including the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) Lie (L) scale, Eysenck’s Lie scale, Wiggins’ Social Desirability (Sd) scale, and Gough’s Good Impression (Gi) index. IM also correlates significantly with the Big Five dimensions of Agreeableness and Conscientiousness under standard instructional conditions.

Discriminant and Experimental Validity

Discriminant validity between the two dimensions is supported by laboratory manipulations of demand characteristics. Paulhus (1984) and Lautenschlager and Flaherty (1990) revealed that manipulating administrative conditions (e.g., anonymous computerized testing versus public face-to-face evaluations) produced significant spikes in IM scores while SDE scores remained invariant. Furthermore, while SDE consistently correlates negatively with internalizing psychopathology (e.g., negative correlations with the Beck Depression Inventory, neuroticism, and social anxiety), IM shows negligible baseline associations with psychological distress, reinforcing that SDE taps an enduring personality disposition of adjustment whereas IM reflects context-dependent tactical self-presentation.

Reliability

The BIDR has consistently exhibited acceptable to strong reliability parameters across diverse demographic groups, including university undergraduates, general community adults, religious cohorts, and clinical populations.

Internal Consistency

Across validation studies conducted by Paulhus (1988) and independent international teams, Cronbach’s alpha coefficients for Self-Deceptive Enhancement typically range between .68 and .80. For Impression Management, internal consistency figures are consistently higher, spanning .75 to .86. When all items are aggregated into an omnibus index of socially desirable responding, the overall internal consistency coefficient reaches .83 to .86, reflecting high scale homogeneity.

Test-Retest Stability

Temporal stability evaluations demonstrate that both subscales possess adequate temporal consistency across varying inter-test intervals. Over a standard 5-week retest window, Paulhus (1988) documented stability coefficients of r = .69 for SDE and r = .65 for IM among college samples. Long-term longitudinal follow-ups have confirmed that SDE functions with stability comparable to broad trait dispositions, whereas IM stability is inherently moderate, reflecting its sensitivity to situational shifts in environmental incentives for social approval.

Factor Analysis

The structural dimensionality of the BIDR has undergone extensive scrutiny utilizing both exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA).

Exploratory Factor Structure

Early exploratory factor extractions conducted by Paulhus (1984, 1988) using principal axis factoring and varimax/promax rotations consistently yielded a prominent two-factor solution. The first factor, accounting for the greatest variance among cognitive items, defined Self-Deceptive Enhancement, characterized by high positive loadings for claims of intellectual competence, rationality, and emotional stability. The second orthogonal factor accounted for the variance among behavioral items, defining Impression Management with prominent loadings on social conformity, adherence to legal rules, and the repudiation of common vices. Inter-factor correlations in early versions hovered between .35 and .65, but iterative refinements in Version 6 reduced the shared variance, yielding low-to-moderate intercorrelations ranging from .05 to .40 depending on situational pressures.

Confirmatory Factor Modeling

Subsequent structural equation modeling across varied cultural adaptations (e.g., European, North American, and East Asian cohorts) has contrasted one-factor, two-factor orthogonal, and two-factor oblique models. Goodness-of-fit indices (including CFI > .90, RMSEA < .06, and SRMR < .05) consistently substantiate the superiority of a dual-factor structure over unidimensional models. More recent psychometric revisions have occasionally explored a hierarchical model bifurcating SDE into self-deceptive enhancement (egoistic bias) and self-deceptive denial (moralistic bias); however, the core bifurcated model between unconscious self-deception and conscious impression management remains the standard empirical baseline.

Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Instrument Name: Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (BIDR; Version 6)
• Primary Author: Delroy L. Paulhus, Ph.D.
• Format: Self-administered paper-and-pencil or computerized questionnaire
• Item Count: Standard full version consists of 40 propositions (Items 1–20 assess SDE; Items 21–40 assess IM; short forms and selected subsets often isolate specific key items).
• Response Scale: 7-point Likert scale:
  • 1 = Not True
  • 4 = Somewhat True
  • 7 = Very True
• Scoring Methodology:
  • Dichotomous Extreme Scoring (Standard): After reverse-scoring negatively keyed items, 1 point is assigned for each extreme response (rating of 6 or 7). Responses ranging from 1 to 5 receive 0 points. Total subscale scores for SDE and IM can each range from 0 to 20 (or proportionately on shortened forms). This procedure ensures that points are credited solely to individuals exhibiting exaggeratedly desirable responding rather than moderate, normative self-endorsement.
  • Continuous Scoring: Alternatively, items can be scored continuously (1 to 7) and averaged or summed to retain full variance for complex parametric modeling and structural equation analyses.

Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The seminal version of the Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding emerged in 1984, followed by the definitive BIDR Version 6 formulated in 1988 by Delroy L. Paulhus at the University of British Columbia. The BIDR is generally accessible without licensing fees for non-commercial academic research and educational applications, provided that proper psychometric citation is credited to the original author. For commercial assessments, high-stakes human resource selection, or proprietary diagnostic deployments, formal authorization and test manual materials must be coordinated through the author or relevant intellectual property rights holders.

References

Alloy, L. B., & Abramson, L. Y. (1979). Judgment of contingency in depressed and nondepressed students: Sadder but wiser? Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 108(4), 441–485. https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-3445.108.4.441

Folkman, S., Lazarus, R. S., Dunkel-Schetter, C., DeLongis, A., & Gruen, R. J. (1986). Dynamics of a stressful encounter: Cognitive appraisal, coping, and encounter outcomes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50(5), 992–1003. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.50.5.992

Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Anchor Books.

Lautenschlager, G. J., & Flaherty, V. L. (1990). Computer administration and social desirability: An evaluation of computer-based questionnaire administration. Journal of Applied Psychology, 75(3), 310–314. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.75.3.310

Leak, G. K., & Fish, S. (1989). Religious orientation, impression management, and self-deception by members of religious groups. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 19(13), 1055–1064. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.1989.tb01237.x

Paulhus, D. L. (1984). Two-component models of socially desirable responding. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 46(3), 598–609. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.46.3.598

Paulhus, D. L. (1988). Assessing self-deception and impression management in self-reports: The Balanced Inventory of Desirable Responding (Manual available from author). Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Paulhus, D. L. (1991). Measurement and control of response bias. In J. P. Robinson, P. R. Shaver, & L. S. Wrightsman (Eds.), Measures of personality and social psychological attitudes (pp. 17–59). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-590241-0.50006-X

Sackeim, H. A., & Gur, R. C. (1978). Self-deception, self-confrontation, and consciousness. In G. E. Schwartz & D. Shapiro (Eds.), Consciousness and self-regulation (Vol. 2, pp. 139–197). Plenum Press. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4684-2571-0_4

Taylor, S. E., & Brown, J. D. (1988). Illusion and well-being: A social psychological perspective on mental health. Psychological Bulletin, 103(2), 193–210. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.103.2.193

Items of the Scale