Does temporary mood inXuence people’s tendency to engage in self-handicapping behaviors? Based on past research on self-handicapping and recent work on aVect and social behaviors, this experiment predicted and found that positive mood signiWcantly increased the tendency to engage in two kinds of self-handicapping strategies. Participants (ND 94) Wrst received contingent or non-contingent positi...

introduction: the present study sought to determine the relationship between perfectionism (positive or negative), self-efficacy, and test anxiety with self-handicapping behaviors. method: the research method was a descriptive and correlational study. for this study, 428 students were chosen from different high schools in shiraz as the participants, using random cluster sampling. the perfection...

Should a firm favor a weaker or stronger employee in a contest? Despite a widespread emphasis on rewarding the best employees, managers continue to tolerate and even favor poor performers. Contest theory reveals that evenly matched contests are the most intense, which implies that a contest designer can maximize each player’s effort by artificially boosting the underdog’s chances. We apply this...

Should a rm favor a weaker or stronger employee in a contest? Despite a widespread emphasis on rewarding the best employees, managers continue to tolerate and even favor poor performers. Contest theory reveals that evenly matched contests are the most intense, which implies that a contest designer can maximize each player's e ort by arti cially boosting the underdog's chances. We apply this typ...

a r t i c l e i n f o Given the well-documented negative effects of academic self-handicapping, researchers should be able to (a) draw valid conclusions about the nature and magnitude of these maladaptive effects, and (b) create efficient intervention procedures that help reduce self-handicapping. To accomplish these goals, reliable knowledge about the structure of academic self-handicapping is...

This study extends previous research on the relations among students' personal achievement goals, perceptions of the classroom goal structure, and reports of the use of self-handicapping strategies. Surveys, specific to the math domain, were given to 484 7th-grade students in nine middle schools. Personal performance-avoid goals positively predicted handicapping, whereas personal performance-ap...

Drawing on theorizing and research suggesting that people are motivated to view their world as an orderly and predictable place in which people get what they deserve, the authors proposed that (a) random and uncontrollable bad outcomes will lower self-esteem and (b) this, in turn, will lead to the adoption of self-defeating beliefs and behaviors. Four experiments demonstrated that participants ...

Some students put off studying until the last minute, fool around the night before a test, and otherwise reduce effort so that if their subsequent performance is low, these circumstances will be seen as the cause rather than lack of ability. These strategies are called self-handicapping because they often undermine performance. In this paper, we begin with a definition of academic self-handicap...

This research investigated whether self-handicapping preserves specific conceptions of ability in a particular domain despite poor performance. Reports of preparatory behaviors and stress among introductory psychology students were measured prior to an exam and subsequent performance, attributions for the performance, and measures of global self-esteem and specific selfconceptions were measured...