Summary of the Main Findings

Study 1 tested six hypotheses on the differential operation of indirect versus direct measures of the personality self-concept under naturalistic faking conditions. The indirect measures were an Implicit Association Test (IAT) and a newly developed Implicit Association Procedure (IAP). I discuss the results separately for each hypothesis, contrast the two indirect procedures with one another, and then briefly discuss general conclusions and open questions for the indirect assessment of personality self-concept.

As expected in Hypothesis 1, the direct self-ratings of shyness, the social desirability scores and the controlled shy behaviors decreased under faking; the decrease was particularly strong for the questionnaire measures (approximately 2 standard deviations). Also in line with this hypothesis, the IAP scores and the spontaneous shy behaviors did not decrease, supporting their non-fakability, and replicating Asendorpf et al.'s (2002) Study 2 findings. There was a slight tendency of the IAT scores to decrease under faking, but a more detailed analysis showed that this decrease was restricted to a minority of participants who had spontaneously attempted to vividly imagine themselves as a nonshy job applicant. Comparable effects of mental imagery on IAT scores and priming measures have been reported in studies that experimentally induced mental imagery of counter stereotypes (Blair, Ma, & Lenton, 2001). It should be noted, however, that even for these participants the effect was only moderate (less than a quarter of a standard deviation).

Whether the indirect tests were completed before or immediately after the shyness-inducing role play had no effects on their mean level, confirming Hypothesis 2. In contrast, the direct self-ratings of shyness were lower after the shyness-inducing role play. This may be attributed to the mastery of the role play that decreased the direct shyness self-ratings.

The higher robustness of the indirect measures against state effects is important for the interpretation of the indirect measures because they are assumed to refer to a relatively stable self-concept of personality, not to current states (cf. Schmukle & Egloff, 2003).

Turning to the correlational hypotheses, the implicit and explicit self-concept measures were significantly less strongly correlated in the faking condition than in the control condition, which fully confirmed Hypothesis 3. This hypothesis was based on the assumption that the direct self-ratings were less valid in the faking condition than in the

control condition because they were distorted by differential tendencies of the participants to present themselves in socially desirable ways.

This assumption was supported by the finding that the indirect measures did not correlate with participants' social desirability scores under both experimental conditions whereas the direct self-ratings correlated more negatively with the social desirability scores in the faking condition than in the control condition. Thus, Hypothesis 4 was fully confirmed. Together, these findings for the effect of faking on the correlations between the indirect measures of shyness, the direct self-ratings of shyness, and social desirability scores strongly support the view that the indirect measures were robust with regard to interindividual differences in faking attempts.

Hypothesis 5 on the validity of the observer judgments of shyness was marginally confirmed. Whereas the observer judgments tended to correlate more strongly with the explicit than with the implicit self-concept of shyness in the control group, these correlations were virtually identical under faking. Moreover, the correlation between the indirect measures and the observer judgment was similar under both experimental conditions. The unique contribution of the direct self-rating under faking to the observer judgments, independent of the contribution of the indirect measure, does not necessarily indicate that the observers were influenced by participants' faking attempts because there were two indications that participants' true shyness perspired in their behavior in the faking condition: a significant correlation for the direct self-ratings of shyness between the faking and the honesty condition, and a significant correlation between the direct and indirect measure under faking.

Together, these results suggest that observer judgments of temperamental traits in role play situations are not very much influenced by the role players' self-presentation even when they systematically try to fake the cues that the observers might use for their judgments (in this case, cues for non-shyness such as talking and gesturing). It seems that the observers use other cues that the participants cannot easily control. Unfortunately, it was not possible to identify such cues from the videotaped behavior.

Turning finally to Hypothesis 6 on a double dissociation between indirect and direct measures, the observer judgments of shyness correlated significantly with both the spontaneous and the controlled indices of shy behavior under both experimental conditions. This validated the spontaneous and controlled indices as behavioral measures of shyness. However, these correlations were smaller than in Asendorpf et al.'s (2002)

Study 1, and contrary to these prior findings, controlled shy behavior was not significantly correlated with the direct shyness self-ratings, and spontaneous shy behavior was not significantly correlated with the indirect measures of shyness. Thus, although the observers interpreted these two behavioral indices as indicators of shyness, they were in fact unrelated to the self-concept of shyness in the control condition. Therefore, the expected double dissociation between the indirect and direct measures of shyness was not found for the control condition.

Because the mean direct self-ratings of shyness in the control condition were not lower than in Asendorpf et al.'s (2002) Study 1, and the observers rated the participants in the control condition even slightly more shy than the participants in this earlier study, the lack of validity of the behavioral measures cannot be attributed to an insufficient induction of shyness by the role play procedure. Instead, it seems that the role play framework itself, the more structured situation (a clear communication goal was defined) and/or the clear status differences between the participants ("boss" versus "employee") apparently changed the meaning of behaviors that were found to be valid indicators of shyness in an unstructured interaction between strangers.

Given this lack of validity of the behavioral measures for the control condition, it was not surprising that all correlations between the behavioral measures and the indirect and direct measures of the self-concept of shyness were not significant also in the faking condition. Therefore, the expected double dissociation between the indirect and direct measures of shyness was again not found.

Thus, in my view the main problem of the present study did not concern the indirect procedures. Instead, it concerned the fact that valid behavioral cues for shyness in more naturalistic situations became completely invalid in a role play context, and could not be replaced by alternative valid cues. If the assessment of shy behavior in role play situations is not the focal point, as in the present study, future studies might try to circumvent this problem by motivating participants to fake non-shyness in dyadic interactions of the type used by Asendorpf et al. (2002), Study 1. I did not follow these lines because I feared that direct instructions to do so would be perceived by the participants as artificial and would therefore insufficiently bias their actual behavior. Alternatively, it might be possible to motivate participants more indirectly to fake non-shyness.