Personal, interpersonal, and situational influences on behavioral self-handicapping

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Social Psychology

Background:

• Self-handicapping is a strategy to protect self-esteem.
• It involves creating obstacles to success to provide an excuse for failure.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how personal (participant sex), interpersonal (experimenter sex), and situational (performance feedback) factors influence behavioral self-handicapping.
• To examine two forms of self-handicapping: reduced practice effort and choosing performance-debilitating conditions.

Main Methods:

• Participants received non-contingent success or failure feedback on a novel task.
• They were then given the opportunity to engage in self-handicapping behaviors before a second performance.
• Self-handicapping included limiting practice or selecting a detrimental condition.

Main Results:

• Men practiced less after failure feedback.
• Men chose debilitating conditions when interacting with female experimenters.
• High performance concern and the presence of a male experimenter increased self-handicapping across conditions.

Conclusions:

• Self-handicapping is modulated by a complex interplay of individual, social, and situational variables.
• Self-presentational concerns, including impressing experimenters and seeking their acceptance, drive self-handicapping behaviors.