In personnel selection, personality questionnaires represent a very popular method to assess personality traits since they are relatively low in cost and time requirements. However, personality questionnaires can be faked easily, in the sense of impression management or socially desirable responding - therefore this method is often criticized. Impression management or socially desirable responding are biasing the data by causing measurement errors and, therefore, decrease the validity of the

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... t scores. In order to reduce the measurement error and thus increase the data quality, the aim of the present study is to investigate the effect of a special priming method against faking on a sample of job-applicants (n=66) and volunteers (n=64). Through goal oriented mindset priming, the participants ought to learn to focus on themselves (reduction of unintentional response distortion), as well as assess themselves realistically with the goal of activating honest and realistic responses in a subsequent personality questionnaire (reduction of intentional response distortion). Although a tendency could be found in the current data that supports a slight reduction of faking through the priming, no significant effect could be found. The implications of this study are discussed in regard to the use of personality questionnaires as a method of assessment, as well as the use of priming as a technique to reduce faking.