The Birkman ‘Challenge’ Component

About Social Desirability

A past survey in the United Kingdom asked men emerging from public restrooms in London if they had washed their hands before leaving. 92% of the men questioned said yes, they had washed their hands. The actual figure was about 45%. The people who organized the survey knew the actual figure was 45% because they had a hidden video camera by the washbasins, and they counted.

Many years ago now, my company did a project with the Ford Motor Corporation, and one of the senior executives became fascinated with our Questionnaire, which asks people to answer a series of statements about themselves and about most people. “In the early 1950’s,” he told me, “Ford did a survey asking people what kind of car they would buy next. They told us, and we built it. It was the Edsel. In the 1960’s, we did another piece of market research. We asked people, ‘The next time your next-door neighbor buys a car, what kind of car do you think he’ll buy?’ They told us, and we built it. It was the Ford Mustang.” The Edsel, of course, was a large and flashy car, and a complete failure. The Mustang was an affordable little sportster, and a runaway success.

What’s going on here? It’s the effects of what is known as social desirability – the tendency of people, when questioned, to place themselves in a rather more favorable light than other people. The men emerging from the restrooms wanted those asking the question to think they’d washed their hands, even if they hadn’t. The people interviewed by the Ford Motor Corporation in the 1950’s wanted those asking the questions to think they could afford a big, fancy car, even though they couldn’t. This tendency has been recognized for a very long time, and people who (like us) create questionnaires and generate results about how people interact with one another have to take this into account in some way. Most creators of questionnaires remove the effects of social desirability statistically. That is, they “know” people in general have a tendency to make themselves “look good,” so they change the scores they generate to compensate.

From the very beginning of my career, I didn’t much like that procedure. Fortunately I didn’t have to use it, because the Questionnaire we work with asks respondents about themselves and about most people. So all we need to do to see the effect of social desirability on people’s answers is to count the number of socially positive things they say about themselves and compare it to the number of socially positive things they say about other people. (My company represents this as a ratio1 – the so-called Challenge score.) There is another good reason for preserving the effects of social desirability on people’s view of themselves and others, which is this: It is one of the strongest motivators people have. It influences very heavily virtually every thought, feeling, and action.

1 This is in fact an over-simplification, but it will serve for the purposes of this article.

At this point, I would like you to participate in a little experiment. I’d like you to guess what percentage of the millions of people who’ve answered our Questionnaire said more socially desirable things about themselves than they did about most people. You may have some clues from what I said at the start of this article. So think about it for a moment, and make your guess before you read any further. Remember, you are to guess how many respondents said more socially desirable things about themselves than they did about most people.

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Made your guess? Then here’s the answer:

Approximately 90% of the general population answers the Questionnaire by placing themselves in a more socially desirable light than most people. Furthermore, this figure is true across all cultures, with only slight variations. The tendency to view ourselves in a “better” light than others seems to be part of the human personality. Only one in twenty people don’t look at things in this way. Only one in twenty people describe themselves on the Questionnaire as “having it less together” than other people. The average response pattern is to place oneself in a significantly more socially desirable light than most people. And some respondents have only socially desirable things to say about themselves, and few or none about most people.

You’ll remember that I said a moment ago that this tendency – to have a “skewed” view of oneself vis-a-vis everyone else – is the single greatest personal motivator people possess. However, depending on the way people view themselves and others, the overt behavior and hidden motivators are very different. So let’s look at them in detail, on the basis (as ever!) that what you don’t understand can hurt your organization.

I am going to divide the world into what I will call High Challenge people, Low Challenge people, and people with moderate Challenge scores. Let’s begin with High Challenge people.

High Challenge people on average view themselves in a slightly more desirable social light than others, but this can range to cover those who see themselves in a less socially desirable light than they do other people. I want to remind you again that having a High Challenge profile is no better (or worse) than having any other kind of Challenge score. That being understood, let’s see how High Challenge people think and behave.

Since High Challenge people do not see themselves in a significantly more socially desirable light than they see others, it follows that they judge themselves by high standards, sometimes even harsh standards. So they tend to set

themselves demanding goals. Very High Challenge people may set themselves impossible goals. Further, if they achieve these goals they can undervalue the achievement – if the goal was that easy (they tell themselves) it must have been too easy. As managers they can also be demanding of others – “after all,” they tell themselves, “If I could do that, surely this person can as well.” They tend also to be analytic: in many situations, they will ask themselves, “What is really going on here?” As a result, they can be contemptuous of what they call “spin,” which to them is simply a cloak that hides reality. When things go wrong, they tend to blame themselves first, others only as an afterthought. They can lack poise in a social context because they compare themselves to others and feel ill- at-ease as a result, and often they appear not to “get” social conventions, saying things that may appear socially awkward. They tend to be drawn to professions that deal with reality – engineers, hands-on people – or with analysis – researchers, thinkers.

So much for High Challenge people. Now let’s look at the other end of the scale.

Low Challenge people see themselves in a significantly more socially desirable light than they do other people. With very low scorers, this tendency may be extremely marked. The focus of Low Challenge people is success – their own success, but also the success of others, particularly those for whom they may be responsible. So they tend to set themselves tasks that are achievable. This is not to say that those tasks may not be challenging; but Low Challenge people need to feel that there is a fair prospect of success. They judge themselves by more realistic standards than High Challenge people, and they tend to be less demanding of others because they “know” that other people are not as able as they themselves are. Low Challenge people like to be involved with the way that things appear. They “know” that what matters is what people think is the case, rather than what actually is the case. As a result, they are drawn to sales positions, or PR jobs, or the “image” side of marketing, where they are dealing with handling other people’s expectations. This is not to imply for one moment that Low Challenge people misrepresent the facts (although you are probably starting to suspect – correctly – that very High Challenge people often do think that Low Challenge people misrepresent the facts). Low Challenge people tend to blame others first, themselves only second, when things go wrong – logically, since they seem themselves in such a socially desirable light. In a social context, they tend to be poised and at ease, because their very positive view of themselves means they feel less threatened by others.

What about people in the middle – that is, people who see themselves in a socially desirable light, but not overly so?

Well, what is hard for these people with moderate Challenge scores is to grasp how important this area is for the other two-thirds of the population. If you’re a manager with a moderate Challenge score, and you have people working with

you who have very high or very low scores, their behavior is likely to prove a sad mystery to you if you don’t know what we’ve just talked about.

Let’s discuss some examples from my own experience.

Recently the principals of a major client of ours visited our company. One of these principals spent the great majority of the visit telling my managers how good he was at his job, how the people who worked for him were the best in the world, how his experience in his field was broader than anyone else he knew. At first my managers listened politely, but after a while you could see they were starting to get restless. They were almost certainly witnessing the antics of someone with a very low Challenge score – further, someone with a low score who was under stress. Fortunately my managers realized how to deal with him – they started to agree with him. And of course, our Low Challenge visitor saw straightaway how perceptive they were, and calmed down considerably. Luckily we had no one in the meeting with a very high Challenge score, or there might have been some fireworks.

By contrast, I have known several extremely able High Challenge consultants who are their own worst enemy. They constantly criticize their own performance, even though their evaluations are excellent. They strive constantly to improve what they do, even where it needs no improvement. You simply can’t pay them a compliment – they always turn it aside. It’s much easier to tell a Low Challenge person that they did well. “Thank you – I appreciate that!” they say – and they do. For a little known fact about people with very low Challenge scores is that they have very high underlying (or hidden) self-consciousness. Behind the poise and the self-confidence always lies a fear of what the other person is thinking. As an experiment, I queried our active database of respondents at Birkman International for the number of people who had very low Challenge scores and low underlying self-consciousness. The answer – one. One out of millions.

This is a huge subject, and I could write many more pages about it. But you can probably see the point – that the extent to which people see themselves in a socially desirable light determines some very fundamental aspects of behavior and motivation. If you’re a manager, this is information you need to know. And the Birkman Method can give it to you. In fact, I ought to make a sales pitch for it right now, but alas, my Challenge score is just too high.