What Is Self Handicapping Essay

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Self handicapping. What is it? It’s a self-destructive behavior in which people construct obstacles or claim that there are obstacles in their way which interfere with their personal successes. Self-handicapping is used for self-esteem protection by creating excuses for failure and possible failure. People typically engage in self-handicapping behaviors to prevent others from creating bad inferences of them based on poor performances. This kind of behavior is so common and subtle that most of the time it goes unnoticed. Self-handicapping applies to all areas of life. For an example, an athlete complaining of a sore ankle right before a big race. The athlete complains about the ankle before the race so that incase they don't perform well they possess something to fall back on. Another example, a student who doesn't obtain a sufficient amount of sleep before a extensive test and if they don't receive a good score they can blame it on their lack of sleep. When people make these excuses, if the result is beneficial they could say “considering all these obstacles I did pretty well.” In the case that the event does end badly, there is already an excuse for the reasoning behind it. By …show more content…

It's a common motive for self enhancement in adults and children. The underlying cause of self-handicapping lies within how one views success and failure. Success is seen as this remarkable thing, that everybody wants to meet as often as they can.Failure, however, is something so disastrous that people tend to not think about it. Self handicapping is a difficult habit to break, because if a person isn't self-aware then they won’t realize that they are doing it. Often when pointed out the self handicapper will become defensive and go into denial. To decrease the amount of self handicapping, the person must notice and extract the distinct self-defeating behaviors, and limit the amount of excuses as they will decrease self

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