This research places self-handicapping and defensive pessimism (comprising defensive expectations and reflectivity) into a single conceptual and analytic framework that models the full self-protective process across time. Data on two occasions collected during students (n 1⁄4 328) first two years at university show: performance orientation positively predicts self-handicapping, defensive expect...

Aim: To investigate the role of implicit theories of ability and achievement goals on self-handicapping strategies in physical education classes. Hypotheses: It was expected that incremental theories of ability would be negatively associated with self-handicapping strategies, whereas fixed theories of ability would enhance pupils’ self-reported use of such strategies. It was also hypothesised t...

Play behavior has been viewed as a mixture of elements drawn from "serious" behavior, interspersed by ritualized play signals. Two other types of play behaviors have been overlooked: patterns that are dissimilar from any serious behavior and patterns with self-handicapping character, that is, those that put the animal into unnecessary disadvantageous positions or situations. Here the authors sh...

Two field studies investigate the role of self in the tendency of athletes to engage in claimed handicapping strategies during training (anticipatively claiming that handicaps may interfere with their performance). Study 1 tested the relationship between trait self-esteem and athletes' engagement in claimed self-handicapping. As hypothesized, low physical self-esteem athletes claimed more handi...

The study examined the predictive ability of self-control academic self-handicapping among university students. sample consists (130) students from a public university, selected randomly. To achieve objectives, survey was employed to collect data. It included scale and an scale. mean, standard deviation, t-test multiple analysis regression were used analyze results revealed that levels BAU mode...

Two studies examined motivational influences on and correlates of defensive pessimism and self-handicapping and investigated the relationship between these two cognitive strategies and performance attainment. The findings indicated that defensive pessimism and self-handicapping have similar motivational profiles, with the primary difference being that self-handicapping represents the absence of...

The self-protective mechanism of self-handicapping appears to be motivated by the need to protect ability attributions in the face of concern about possible failure. Indeed, the present research finds a correlation between trait self-handicapping and chronic prevention focus. Moreover, the present research examines the role of ‘‘regulatory fit” on the use of claimed self-handicapping by exposin...

BACKGROUND Self-handicapping is an attribution-related process whereby individuals create performance impediments/excuses to protect self-worth in socially evaluative environments. Thus, the prevailing motivational climate would appear to be an important factor when attempting to understand the situational self-handicapping process within school physical education. AIMS Drawing from achieveme...

The present study investigated whether dispositional self-handicapping (tendency to create or claim obstacles to performance in order to protect the self from negative attributions) predicts pain catastrophizing and self-reported pain. Based on the idea that exaggerated claims of pain provides a potential and an easy way to self-handicap, it was hypothesized that trait self-handicapping would b...