Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 1983, Vol. 51, No. 1, 141-143 Copyright 1983 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0022-006X/83/5l01-0141$00.75 Social Desirability: Its Relevance to the Measurement of Hopelessness and Suicidal Behavior Marsha M. Linehan and Stevan L. Nielsen University of Washington In a prior article, we examined the relationship between social desirability (SD), hopelessness, and reports of suicidal ideation/behavior. We concluded that self- reports of hopelessness are potentially confounded with SD and should be used with caution in research and in predicting suicidal behavior. Nevid (1982) re- sponded commenting that since the relationship between SD and hopelessness could be predicted theoretically, our results do not justify doubting the validity of the hopelessness measures. We reply here that the correlation between SD and hopelessness is open to several interpretations, but, in the absence of further data, concern for false-negative rates dictates caution in interpreting hopelessness scores when assessing suicidal behavior. We present further data on the relationship of SD, hopelessness, and prediction of future suicidal behavior collected from an inpatient psychiatric population. Results were similar to those we obtained in our original study, thus, strengthening the confidence one can have in those results. In a prior article, Nielsen and I (Linehan & Nielsen, 1981) presented data showing the follow- ing results for a general-population sample: (a) the Beck Hopelessness Inventory (Beck, Weissman, Lester, & Trexler, 1974) is negatively correlated with the Edwards Social Desirability scale (Ed- wards, 1970); (b) the positive relationship found between hopelessness scores and self-reports of prior, current, and predicted future suicidal be- havior is lost or substantially reduced when one controls for social-desirability scores; (c) low so- cial-desirability scores are significantly correlated with self-reports of prior suicidal behavior—and this relationship is not lost when one controls for hopelessness scores; and (d) the magnitude of these relationships increases for persons with past seri- ous suicidal behavior or ideation. In a reply, Nevid (1983) suggests that our major point was to ques- tion the construct validity of the Beck Hopeless- ness Inventory. In addition, he argues (a) that our data does not constitute adequate grounds for in- voking social desirability as a potential confound in the assessment of hopelessness and (b) that so- cial desirability as a potential confound in the in- terpretability of psychological tests is a "dead horse issue." First, we did not state that our results invali- dated the Beck inventory as a measure of hope- This research was supported by National Institute of Mental Health Grant MH34486. The authors would like to thank Barbara Graham fbr conducting the statistical analyses. Requests for reprints should be sent to Marsha M. Linehan, Department of Psychology, NI-25, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195. lessness. We did conclude that research using self- report inventories of hopelessness should be con- ducted with caution and that attention should be given to the possible confound created by an in- dividual's tendency to answer in a socially desir- able fashion. According to Nevid, the covariation of hopelessness and social desirability could rep- resent measurement of a common construct or a common personality trait. That potential rela- tionship can, in part, be investigated empirically, as Nevid realizes in suggesting factor analytic in- vestigations of the combined item pool of the hopelessness and social-desirability scales. Psycho- metric properties of the items are certainly im- portant, but the meanings of items to respondents, their face validity, can also be investigated outside their psychometric properties. The rationale for face similarities of the two scales is open to ques- tion. For different reasons, Nevid may have a good point in equating the two kinds of scale items as cognitive factors. Socially desirable response pat- terns may be theoretically important for the study of psychopathology in general. Socially desirable responding may include thoughtless, overly gen- erous responses; individuals may continuously give themselves the benefit of the doubt because of the negative implications of negative self-per- ception. Thus, social-desirability scores may rep- resent a symptom of the dichotomous (good/bad) reasoning processes important to most cognitive- behavioral theories (cf., Beck & Rush, 1979; Jones & Sigall, 1971; O'Neal & Mills, 1969). Although we admit that these are reasonable hypotheses, it is equally likely that the original interpretation of our results could also be true. Specifically, indi- 141