Courtesy Bias

Cross-cultural fieldwork in the 1950s and 1960s first exposed a pattern that researchers would come to call courtesy bias. Allen L. Edwards introduced the closely related concept of "social desirability" in 1953, demonstrating how questionnaire responses skew toward what respondents think is expected of them. The distinct label gained traction through Southeast Asian survey work, formalized in a 1971 UNESCO report documenting how power imbalances between interviewers and subjects produced systematically flattering answers.