Three different constructs for measuring social influence were utilized in the present study to explain adolescents' present and future smoking behavior at 6 (T2), 12 (T3), and 18 months (T4) after the first test. Social influence was assessed by measuring the social norms, perceived smoking behavior, and direct pressure. The impact of the social influence constructs was also assessed in the context of broader models, including attitudes and self‐efficacy expectations, intention, and previous behavior. The three social influence measures correlated significantly with intention and behavior. Stepwise regression analyses showed that perceived behavior and pressure made significant contributions, after entering social norms, in explaining actual and future adolescent smoking behavior. Adding attitudes and self‐efficacy increased the predictive power of the model significantly. In agreement with the theory of Fishbein & Ajzen (1975), intention was the most powerful predictor in explaining present and future smoking behavior. Attitudes, self‐efficacy, and the social influences also made small unique contributions improving the explanatory power by approximately 5%. Previous behavior, however, had a substantial unique contribution in predicting future behavior after attitudes, social influences, self‐efficacy, and intention were entered in the equations. Since social influences may exert their impact via different routes, it is recommended that smoking prevention programs discuss not only overt pressures such as direct pressure from peers, parents, and media, but also address the more covert social pressures such as modeling and the adolescents' ability to cope with these covert influences. Furthermore, norms on nonsmoking should be made explicit.

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KATHARINA MEERUM TERWOGT-KOUWENHOVENIt was tested whether the same factors people take into account when involved in the decision to lie apply to the evaluation of lies presented in scenarios. The scenarios represented 12 different situation categories formed by the crossing of the ntotivr for lying (social. individualistic, egoistic), the relative importance of the situation (important matter, unimportant matter), and the closeness of the relation between the subject and the receiver of the lie (best friend, acquaintance). The acceptability of lying was evaluated from 2 perspectives (self, others) by 180 women of the general public. The results show that as the interest of the person that is lied to becomes greater, lying becomes more acceptable. As the interest of the liar becomes greater, lying becomes less acceptable. The systematically higher estimations of acceptability attributed to others indicate a false-uniqueness effect.The proposition that lying is to be rejected in most instances seems to be advocated not only by social scientists and philosophers (e.g., Barnes, 1994; Bok, 1978) but also by laypeople. From group interviews, conducted as a pilot study (Backbier, 1994) in order to gain a deeper insight into the way people view lying and deception in everyday life, it appeared that the interviewees reacted rather negatively to lying in general and even more negatively to other people's lies. In contrast, however, the interviewees reported many instances in which they lied themselves, and even showed a great deal of understanding for their own lies. The interviewees did not seem to be aware of having a somewhat dual 'This study was conducted as part of a research project on "lying and deception in everyday life." The authors would like to thank Monique Crooy, Jaro van der Ende, Milja Falentijn, Jutka Halberstadt, and Nieske Winters for their assistance in developing the scenarios and collecting the data.

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