CAN RELATING THE PAST DISCLOSE THE FUTURE

Studies in social psychology inadvertently call for a subject's recons truction of past behaviors when using interviews, questionnaires, or p ersonality inventories. Since subjects' past behaviors are unobservabl es, subjects reconstruct their past retroductively. However, since the behaviors are not perceptually observed, such inquiry is decontextual ized and probabilistic. Hence, reconstructions are frequently organize d in terms of commonsense plausibility and personal accountability rat her than causality. It is proposed that such inquiry may be improved b y having subjects not only endorse preformatted material, but also by providing warrants for subjects' endorsements. The provision of warran ts has been shown to structure past reality perceptions of laypersons (Rettig, 1990). The provision of warrants not only recontextualizes re call of past behaviors but also discloses historical continuity which, in turn, suggests higher probabilities of future behaviors.