The susceptibility of the Self-Consciousness Questionnaire (Fenigstein, Scheier, & Buss, 1975) to social desirability influences
was investigated by experimental manipulation of impression-set. Subjects completed the SCQ under one of three instructional
conditions: responding honestly, responding to create a good impression, and responding to create a bad impression. Impression-set
had no significant effect on private self-consciousness scores but had significant effects on public self-consciousness scores
for males and on social anxiety scores for both males and females. However, the size of these effects was not large given
that experimental manipulations of impression-set maximize social desirability effects. Comparisons of effect-sizes with previous
findings that used different personality measures indicated that the present effects on SCQ scores were among the smallest.