When conducting research on reception of cultural products, sociologists often have to rely on receivers’ accounts. This brings a particularly salient problem in these studies, namely, social desirability or the tendency of individuals to present themselves to the researcher in a favourable manner regarding social norms and mores. Mobilizing the particular case of a research on self-help books readers involving fifty-five qualitative interviews, this article investigates (a) how social desirability is manifested in these qualitative interviews, (b) what may be its heuristic relevance for research; and (c) the risks that it carries for the data’s validity. The article shows how people’s tendency to present themselves in a favourable light is very instructive as to the norms that individuals project, but it also pays attention to the ways social desirability threatens the material’s status and proposes some ways of coping with it.
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