When a person gives the same response to nearly every item on a rating scale,…

Concept

Response styles are systematic patterns in how people use a rating scale, independent of the specific content of individual items.

Non-differentiation, also called straightlining, is the tendency to select the same or nearly the same response across a series of items instead of discriminating among them.

Application

The respondent in the question repeats essentially one rating across almost all items. That pattern shows little differentiation among item contents, so it is non-differentiation.

Contrast

• Telescoping concerns placing a remembered event too recently or too far in the past.

• Satisficing is a broader low-effort strategy in which an acceptable response is given without fully optimizing the judgment.

• Optimizing involves carefully interpreting the item, retrieving relevant information, forming a judgment, and reporting it.

Result

Therefore, the response pattern described is non-differentiation.