Self-report based General Factor of Personality as socially-desirable responding, positive self-evaluation, and social-effectiveness

•Tested for three sources of variance in the General Factor of Personality•Social-effectiveness accounted for variance•Positive self-evaluation accounted for variance•Socially-desirable responding accounted for variance•Self-report based GFPs are composed of these three sources of variance.

We tested the contribution of three potential sources of variance in self-reported based General Factor of Personality (GFP) scores, namely socially-desirable response bias, positive self-evaluation, and social-effectiveness. Measures of socially-desirable response bias, positive self-evaluation, along with a rater-based measure of social effectiveness were used to predict three separate self-report based GFPs and a composite GFP based upon the three measures. Regression analyses and relative weight analyses showed that each of the potential sources of variance played a role in the GFP, with social effectiveness often explaining the largest proportion of variance. The results add to our understanding of the GFP and suggest that a proper view is that variance in self-report GFPs has at least three interrelated facets.