It is said that when questionnaire tests were used in personality researches and ratings of others, there is an inherent error which comes from over-stressing desirable traits. As an attempt to examine the nature of this error, factor analyses were made on desirabilities of two groups of items consisting of 28 words expressive of personality traits and with nearly equal desirability scale values.
The Ss consisted of 80 male college students and 80 adult workers. From the former group, three factors were extracted as desirable traits and they were named as follows: 1. oriented toward industrious and persistent trait, 2. oriented toward kind and cheerful trait, 3. oriented toward stable and self-possessed trait. From the latter group, three factors were extracted as undesirable traits and they were named as follows: 1. negative of unstable and self-centered trait, 2. negative of passive and apathetic trait, 3. negative of unkind and affected trait.
From the fact that the loadings of extracted factors prior to rotation rapidly descreased at the third factor with regard to both desirable and undesirable traits analyses. Rotation were also done by the first two factors through varimax method.