~ Self-Handicapping Behaviors ~

~ Self-Handicapping Behaviors ~ • Some Basic Psychological Assumptions --- • People desire accurate, diagnostic feedback about themselves • Social comparison (Festinger) • Attribution theory; know about cause and effect relationships (Heider, Kelley) • Achievement motivation literature • Desire to know correct information about one’s competence What type of tasks are preferred by those with high achievement motivation as compared to those with low achievement motivation scores? But, what if there is a realistic chance that diagnostic information will indicate one is incompetent?

~ Self-Handicapping Behaviors ~ What is the definition of self-handicapping behaviors? • Failure will be attributed to external sources • Success will be attributed to internal factors • (Kelley’s augmentation principle. Augmentation: “If, for a given effect, both a plausible inhibitory cause and a plausible facilitative cause are present, the role of the facilitative cause in producing the effect will be judged greater that if it alone were present (1972, p. 12)” e.g., if one succeeds despite a handicap, one’s ability will be assigned a greater cause for that success Self-handicappers do not strive to fail. They are okay with the likelihood of failure if it can be explained away; and if any success can be enhance one’s ability

~ Self-Handicapping Behaviors ~ What underlies the development of self-handicapping behaviors? • History of non-contingent reinforcement --- especially for success • Fosters beliefs that one’s success cannot be repeated; they lack control over their success (but, the perception that one has partly earned their success is crucial for self-handicapping to develop) • “ … are never clearly reconciled to the fact that their success is something arbitrarily bequeathed to them … There is always sufficient ambiguity to feed the process of self-deception and wishful thinking about competence.” • Key role of ability attributions for success ______________________________________________________________ Unsuccessful (know one’s ability; choose attainable goals, doable tasks; can readily assess difficulty level of tasks/situations Self-handicappers; uncertain about how competent they are Successful

~ Self-Handicapping Behaviors ~ • Self-handicapping is NOT a strategy for public, self-presentation purposes to others (e.g., the attributions of others for one’s performance) • Individuals engage in self-handicapping for attributions about one’s own competence (self-attributions) • Key role of public vs. private attributions

What was the procedure of the 1st study?

~ Self-Handicapping Behaviors (cont.) ~ How do attributions of ability impact self-handicapping? Do self-handicapping behaviors occur for both self and other attributions? What is the evidence for your answer? Do gender differences exist in the use of self-handicapping behaviors? If so, why?

Males in the public condition did not distinguish the difficulty of solvable and unsolvable problems • Public participants attributed their success for to ability • Males chose the handicapping drug more than females • Males attributed more of their success to ability than females • Public vs. private conditions did not affect drug choices (especially for males)

Not significant

~ Overjustification Effect ~ [a.k.a. Self-Determination Theory] Explain the basic premise of the over-justification effect? Why does it occur? ___________________________________________________________ Intrinsic External rewards are not clear or obvious; attributions are to oneself (intrinsic) Extrinsic External rewards are not clear or obvious; attributions are made to external sources

Also, the quality of the expected-reward participants was judged to be much lower

Conditions where external reward may be useful or necessary • When the level of intrinsic interest is initially very low • When individuals need to engage in an activity for an extended period of time for it to become attractive to them (e.g., mastery occurs)

~ Overjustification Effect (cont.) ~ What is intrinsic motivation? How do you know it exists? Can the overjustification effect be explained in operant conditioning terms? If so, how?

~ Overjustification Effect (cont.) ~ What are the pragmatic implications of the overjustification effect (e.g., it occurs more often when rewards are directly connected with performance)?

~ Self-Handicapping Behaviors ~