Among some 150 young men, the Crowne-Marlowe scale of need for social approval correlated positively with the amount of distortion (in a socially desirable direction) in self-reports of grades and extracurricular activities. However, this relationship held only among those for whom these events were not so recent and who could reasonably believe that their reports' accuracy would not be checked. For these same individuals, two measures of fear of failure were also positively related to the amount of distortion in reports of grades.
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