Social desirability has long been viewed as a potential source of error variance in self-report
measures. We suggest that social desirability (whether in the form of impression
management or self-deception) has the capacity to mask relations between psychosocial
variables and sport-related outcome or criterion measures that are not measured by self-
report. To illustrate what can occur, we present data from a longitudinal study in which life
stress and psychological coping skills were studied as predictors of behaviorally-defined …