Is it Difficult to be a People-Pleaser? An Item Response-Theoretical Examination of the People Pleasing Scale

The phenomenon of people-pleasing (i.e., the tendency to sacrifice one’s own needs and obligations to help others) has recently attracted considerable attention in popular psychology. Empirical research has been devoted only recently to the development and validation of suitable measurement tools such as the People Pleasing Scale (Blötner, 2026; https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-026-09519-2). The measure provides desirable psychometric properties from the perspective of Classical Test Theory, but in this framework, several statistical assumptions about item and scale characteristics remain untested. To address this gap, we subjected the People Pleasing Scale to item response-theoretical examinations as per the polytomous Graded Response Model (N = 2,538). The three-factor solution (Responsibility, Neglect of Own Needs, and Others’ Expectations) elicited sufficient model and item fit and predominant support for the assumption of local independence. Its three subscales provided favorable item discrimination and threshold parameters indicating that endorsement of the highest response categories requires only moderately elevated levels of people-pleasing. Seven of the 10 items provided information across comparatively broad regions of the latent trait continuum, albeit with lower peak information. These findings illustrate candidate items for future scale shortening without substantial loss of measurement precision.