Social scientists have long debated the question of how much social desirability biases affect the information they can gather from survey respondents. Historically, these biases have been considered more of a nuisance than a crucial factor. However, we contend that social desirability biases are essential for social scientists to understand, as they serve as important indicators of social norms and conformity within societies. We compare six different methods for measuring social desirability bias in relation to support for democracy in three European countries. In addition to a list experiment, we use various approaches that prompt respondents to provide socially acceptable answers. Our results demonstrate that triggering social desirability outperforms list experiments and observational measures in several ways. Most notably, our approach allows researchers to assess whether social desirability has been manipulated and ensures that social desirability is considered as a substantive research interest rather than just a nuisance.