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1. Examine the client's own level of confidence in his or her selfreports. Common sense, as well as empirical research, suggest that a client's stated confidence in his or her self-report is a clue to its accuracy. The extent to which a person offers a selfdescription in a definitive, as opposed to a tentative, manner has been found to relate to the predictive validity of those descriptions. Evidence from the attitude-behavior literature in social psychology supports this notion. Fazio and Zanna (1978), for example, have demonstrated that more confidently stated attitudes evidence a better fit with later behavior. In addition, Osberg and Shrauger (1986, Study 4) documented a similar effect of confidence on the accuracy of people's self-predictions of their behavior. Self-predictions involve individuals in using their self-knowledge to formulate predictions of their future behavior, whereas self-reports simply tap into people's selfdescriptions of their current or past functioning. Individuals were asked to predict their likelihood of engaging in varied behaviors over 2 months using a 4-point prediction scale whose anchors were 4= definitely will occur, 3=probably will occur, 2= probably will not occur, and 1 = definitely will not occur. A subsequent check of later actual behavior revealed that people were accurate more than 80% of the time when their predictions were definite, compared to 60% accuracy for predictions stated as probable. These results suggest that, in stating self-reports with varying degrees of confidence, people are providing an implicit self-evaluation of the likely accuracy of their judgments. Thus, confidence in providing self-reports should serve as an additional cue to counselors in deciding when to rely on clients' self-reports.

2. Encourage clients to attend to their past behavior to enhance the accuracy of self-reports. Recent empirical data suggest that, when people attend to certain kinds of information in formulating self-reports, accuracy is increased. One such type of information is the person's past behavior related to the self-judgment being requested. For example, Regan and Fazio (1977) demonstrated that the self-reported attitudes of people instructed to recall their past relevant behavior showed a better fit with later actual behavior than was true for people who were given no such instructions. In addition, Osberg and Shrauger (1986, Study 3) determined that participants who were directed to attend to their past behavior in predicting their future behavior were more accurate in their predictions than those who were not instructed to attend to this information. Thus, counselors should encourage clients to recall any instances of past relevant behavior when formulating self-reports as a means of increasing their validity. Furthermore, the above findings suggest that less reliance should be placed on self-report when the client is unfamiliar with the behavioral domain to be judged.

3. Encourage clients to attend to relevant personal dispositions to increase the validity of self-reports. Markus (1977) introduced the concept of self-schema to refer to firm cognitive generalizations about the self. Self-schemata are those dimensions of the selfconcept about which the person has very clear and definite self-evaluations. Markus presented evidence that self-judgments related to schematic dimensions are made more quickly and accurately. This suggests that having a person recall schematic personal dispositions relevant to the behavioral dimension about which self-reports are being elicited could enhance validity.

An example in career counseling would involve having people attend to their level of shyness when judging whether

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or not they would be interested in work as a salesperson. Intuitively, shyness should be a dimension that relates to a person's degree of comfort and satisfaction in working at sales. The research literature, however, is the best source of data when selecting which personality dimensions are most relevant to predictions of behavior within a specific domain. If intuition or research indicates the relevance of shyness to sales and if a client has a firm self-description (or self-schema) concerning his or her level of shyness, this should be important information to which the person should attend in predicting his or her adjustment to a career in sales. The findings of Osberg and Shrauger (1986, Studies 2 and 3) support this expectation, in that individuals who report attending to relevant personal dispositions, compared to those who did not, were found to give more accurate self-predictions of their behavior. Thus, counselors should encourage clients to reflect about those self-dimensions on which they know themselves well when giving self-reports. When the behavioral domain assessed is one about which the client has no clear self-appraisal, overreliance on self-report may be contraindicated.

4. Assess the client's level of introspectiveness to determine whether reliance on self-report is appropriate. Obviously, not all clients may be capable of providing valid self-reports. As discussed by Shrauger and Osberg (1981), children and persons with extreme forms of psychopathology, such as psychosis, are two populations wherein reliance on self-report may be inappropriate. In addition, it may be risky to rely on self-report as a major data source in other populations, such as individuals with personality disorders, for example, antisocial personality. That is not to say that the use of self-report should be completely abandoned with these groups. The self-reports of such individuals may be useful but should be interpreted cautiously. For example, in one recent study it was found that prison inmates' self-reports provided a useful data source because, in some areas, these reports were inversely related to objective indices of behavior (Osberg & Nielsen, 1988).

More subtle personality characteristics may relate to the individual's capability of giving valid self-reports as well. Fenigstein, Scheier, and Buss's (1975) constructs of private and public self-consciousness, in particular, have been found to moderate self-report validity. Private self-consciousness refers to a person's level of introspectiveness, whereas public self-consciousness indicates a person's concern with social image. Several studies have determined that private self-consciousness is positively related to self-report validity, whereas public selfconsciousness has been found to be negatively related (see Osberg & Shrauger, 1986, for a review). Thus counselors should consider assessing client introspectiveness, perhaps through the use of Fenigstein et al.'s measure (see Osberg, 1987a, for a review of its psychometric properties), when deciding how much faith to put in a person's self-reports. Other individual differences dimensions that may moderate the accuracy of clients' self-reports include intelligence, as well as Cacioppo and Petty's (1982) construct of need for cognition, which they define as the tendency to engage in and enjoy thinking (see Osberg, 1987b, for a discussion of its potential relationship to accuracy). In addition, there is the dimension of objectivism, which represents a person's tendency to make judgments in a rational, information-based manner (Leary, Sheppard, McNeil, Jenkins, & Barnes, 1986).

In closing, I join several other psychological assessment theorists who have converged on the view that greater use of

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peoples' self-assessments would provide greater validity than more traditional means of predicting behavior (e.g., Burisch, 1984; Dana, 1984; Korchin & Schuldberg, 1981; Lanyon, 1984; Mischel, 1977; Rorer & Widiger, 1983). I echo the sentiments of Laing (1988), who has put the issues related to reliance on self-reports before counselors who confront these issues daily; I hope my comments provide some additional structure to aid in deciding when and for whom reliance on self-reports is most appropriate. As I have noted elsewhere (Osberg & Shrauger, in press), one potential positive side effect of relying more on clients' self-reports in the assessment process is that it may foster a greater sense of collegiality between clients and counselors. The benefits of such collegiality may include a more collaborative relationship that will lead clients to be more candid and cooperative and thus enhance the accuracy of assessments. A more collegial relationship may also engender greater feelings of responsibility and ownership by clients for therapeutic gains or losses.

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Osberg, T.M., & Shrauger, J.S. (in press). The role of self-prediction in psychological assessment. In J.N. Butcher & C.D. Spielberger (Eds.), Advances in personality assessment (vol. 8). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Regan, D.T., & Fazio, R.H. (1977). On the consistency between attitudes and behavior: A look at the method of attitude formation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 13, 28-45. Richert, A.J. (1976). Expectations, experiencing, and change in psychotherapy. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 32, 438-444. Rorer, L.C., & Widiger, T.A. (1983). Personality structure and assessment. Annual Review of Psychology, 34, 431-463. Shrauger, J.S., & Osberg, T.M. (1981). The relative accuracy of selfpredictions and judgments by others in psychological assessment. Psychological Bulletin, 90, 322-351.

Shrauger, J.S., & Osberg, T.M. (1982). Self-awareness: The ability to predict one's future behavior. In G. Underwood (Ed.), Aspects of consciousness: Awareness and self-awareness (Vol. 3, pp. 267-313). London: Academic Press.

Timothy M. Osberg is an associate professor and chairperson, Department of Psychology, Niagara University, New York. The author is grateful to the associate editor, Charles D. Claiborn, two anonymous reviewers, and Thomas Capo for their helpful comments on an earlier draft of this article. Correspondence regarding this article should be sent to Timothy M. Osberg, Dept. of Psychology, Niagara University, Niagara University, NY 14109.

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