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Social desirability is a tendency to respond to items in a socially acceptable way. It can bias results and is a threat to the validity of the measure. The current study focused on exploring the effect of different instructions on personality traits. The sample consists of 363 Slovak adults, 260 women, and 103 men. The participants were between 18 and 62 years old (M = 25.6; SD = 6.76). The Big Five Inventory-2 was used for measuring personality traits and social desirability. The participants were split into two groups depending on which instruction was administered first – honest setting or social desirability inducing setting (imagining the selection situation). All participants responded to both scenarios. We hypothesized that extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness are socially desirable traits, and so they will be higher using selection simulating instruction compared to honest instruction. The opposite was hypothesized for negative emotionality. The social desirability of open-mindedness was explored. The results confirmed all our hypotheses and showed that open-mindedness is a socially desirable trait as well. Importantly, we found an effect of the order of administrating different instructions – the effect of induced social desirability was present in the honest instruction setting.

Social desirability is a tendency to respond to items in a socially acceptable way. It can bias results and is a threat to the validity of the measure. The current study focused on exploring the effect of different instructions on personality traits. The sample consists of 363 Slovak adults, 260 women, and 103 men. The participants were between 18 and 62 years old (M = 25.6; SD = 6.76). The Big Five Inventory-2 was used for measuring personality traits and social desirability. The participants were split into two groups depending on which instruction was administered first–honest setting or social desirability inducing setting (imagining the selection situation). All participants responded to both scenarios. We hypothesized that extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness are socially desirable traits, and so they will be higher using selection simulating instruction compared to honest instruction. The opposite was hypothesized for negative emotionality. The social desirability of open-mindedness was explored. The results confirmed all our hypotheses and showed that open-mindedness is a socially desirable trait as well. Importantly, we found an effect of the order of administrating different instructions–the effect of induced social desirability was present in the honest instruction setting.

The article describes the process of adaptation of the Big Five Inventory–2 into the Slovak language and cultural context. The translation process of the Slovak BFI-2 was based on three data samples using item analysis and basic psychometric properties. The present study estimates the psychometric properties of the Slovak BFI-2 and its hierarchical structure using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis in an independent sample of 526 participants recruited through an online research panel. It also provides data on convergent-discriminant validity in relation to alternative Big Five measures (NEO-FFI, TIPI) and to standard well-being measures. The results showed good internal consistency on the domain level, and somewhat lower on the facet level. Both exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses successfully recovered the conceptual structure of the Slovak BFI-2. The BFI-2 domains and facets showed adequate convergent-discriminant validity, based on the meaningful pattern of correlations with the other Big Five measures and well-being scales. These findings suggest that the Slovak version of the BFI-2 is a reliable and valid measure of the Big Five personality traits, and is appropriate for use in Slovak and cross-cultural research.

Acquiescence is the consistent tendency toward a shift of responses in the direction of agreement rather than disagreement regardless of the content, and it is usually measured by manifest approach based on a deviation from the median of the response scale and by latent approach using confirmatory factor analysis. Our goal was to investigate whether acquiescence, as measured by both approaches, was stable over time. We explored the relationship of acquiescence with variables that are usually considered to be validating criteria for acquiescence. The research was conducted on a general sample of 443 Slovak adult participants, while using the BFI-2 as the tool to identify acquiescence. Data were collected twice with an interval of almost two years. The results showed that both approaches showed relative stability over time, with correlation coefficients r = .50 for the manifest and r = .55 for the latent approach. The time stability of acquiescence suggests that acquiescence is more of a participant-related than a situation-related construct. Both approaches positively correlated with counts of agreements used as validating variables. For future research, we recommend using CFA to identify acquiescence because of the low reliability of the manifest approach and counts of agreements from another time point as a validity criterion whenever possible.

The research aim was to find out whether providing information on psychological preparation would produce changes in pre-retirees retirement planning intentions and advance retirement concepts. In the experiment, we divided the pre-retirees (N = 567, mean age of 54.91, SD = 3.55 years, working full-time) into four groups (with and without pre-test, with and without the information provided). There were no differences between the pre-test and post-test conditions. However, the results showed that participants acknowledged the need to prepare for retirement even before the intervention. The participants also rated themselves as psychologically prepared for retirement. The results also indicated which pre-retirees could benefit from psychological preparation: those who believe they would have a disadvantageous and unfavorable retirement transition. The next group is the ones who tend to conceptualize their retirement as an imposed disruption as they also perceive their psychological resources for a successful transition as insufficient.

The present study focused on whether Dark Tetrad characteristics (machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy, and sadism) predict conspiracy beliefs (COVID-19 related and general) in the Slovak population. Three independent samples were used for the study. The first sample consisted of 804 (73.9% women) university students of the middle-sized Slovak university. The second sample consisted of 489 (61.2% women) Facebook users. The third group was recruited from an online panel of a research agency and included 600 respondents (49% women). The results provided different findings for the three research samples. Results showed that machiavellianism was a positive predictor of conspiracy beliefs (COVID-19 and general) among respondents from a research agency and a university (general only). Psychopathy positively predicted COVID-19 and general conspiracy beliefs only among respondents from the Facebook sample. Narcissism positively predicted COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs among university students. The results of the study suggest that there is no consistent pattern of relationship between Dark Tetrad and conspiracy beliefs across different samples in Slovakia. Future research should focus on whether these inconsistencies are due to sample characteristics or they express lack of stable relationships between these two psychological variables.

The present study examines the Big Five traits and socio-demographic factors as predictors of both traditional left-right and liberal-conservative positions of Slovak voters (N = 704). As shown in previous research, Open-Mindedness and Conscientiousness are significant but weak predictors of both political axes, while Agreeableness plays a surprising role in predicting left-right orientation. To overcome the limitations of traditional political axes, three latent variables of the Slovak political space were discovered by exploratory factor analysis (EFA) of political preferences: sympathy towards old/new government, socially conservative parties, and a non-populist coalition. The former is significantly predicted by Open-Mindedness, while the latter is predicted by Conscientiousness. Overall, the Big Five traits predict a small but significant variance in political variables.

Acquiescence is defined as the tendency of respondents to shift their answer towards agreeing rather than disagreeing with items, regardless of the items’ content. As a response style, it can be a significant factor in distorting research results. This article examines the nature, predictors, and consequences of this response style and the possibility of identifying and controlling it. The results of time stability and domain/method specificity of acquiescence suggest that it is more a participant-related than situational-related construct. Two categories of correlates or predictors of acquiescence were identified: a high level of social deference/conformity and a low level of cognitive processing on the part of respondents. The two most common approaches used to estimate acquiescence are the manifest approach, which involves computing the deviation from the median of the response scale, and the latent approach, which uses confirmatory factor analysis with a bifactor model. The advantage of the manifest approach is its technical simplicity when certain criteria are met, but its ability to cleanse the results of the effect of acquiescence is rather limited. The more technically demanding latent approach, by contrast, is useful for its ability not only to identify acquiescence bias but also to reduce bias. In a model analysis using the latent approach, the results were cleansed of the effect of acquiescence.

Objectives. The study focuses on the psychometric examination of the Meaning in Life Questionnaire (MLQ) in a Slovak translation. Sample and settings. The sample consisted of 1368 Slovak participants (mean age 41.58 years). To assess the questionnaire's stability over time and predictive power, a subset of participants (421 adults) was invited to retest after approximately six months. Statistical analyses. Confirmatory factor analysis (CEA) was performed to assess internal structure of the MLQ and its measurement invariance across gender and age groups. Item response theory (IRT) using single-factor generalized partial credit model was applied for item analysis. Hierarchical linear regression analysis was performed to examine the predictive power of the MLQ. Results. The MLQ showed good internal consistency for both subscales, but the CEA showed perfect fit only for the Presence of Meaning subscale; fit for the Search for Meaning subscale was borderline acceptable. Both subscales were found to be invariant across gender and age groups. Correlation analysis revealed positive associations between Presence of meaning and subjective well-being, whereas Search for meaning was only weakly correlated or not correlated at all. Longitudinal analysis revealed that Presence of meaning (but not the Search for meaning) significantly predicted life satisfaction after controlling for personality and emotionbased measures of well-being. Limitations. The limitation of the study is specific sample recruited through research panel agency based on self-selection of participant.