Detecting Impression Management: Improving Conditional Reasoning Test Validity with Forced-Choice Survey

Whether you are an instructor trying to relate to their students, an employee trying to impress their boss, an athlete trying to intimidate their opponent, or anywhere in between; everyone uses impression management in some form or another. The primary purpose of our study is to develop a conditional reasoning test that can detect an individual’s dominant impression management strategies as well as abnormal levels of impression management. The conditional reasoning test would be utilized by employers to detect the use of impression management strategies among job applicants, allowing employers parse potentially misleading or false information provided during the selection process. Currently, we have established a conditional reasoning test that should predict preferred impression management response types. Additionally, we are looking to create a secondary forced-choice survey to be administered after the conditional reasoning test. By forcing participants to select impression management responses, we believe this will provide valuable insight into participants preferred impression management strategies in an applicant-type position which can be compared to participants’ results of the conditional reasoning test in order to establish its validity