Self-Handicapping

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that Berglas and Jones' self-handicapping theory states that people will do things to make their success in something else unlikely. The author pointed out that, when Kolditz and Arkin replicated Berglas and Jones' study with attempted measures of increased privacy, they came to more firm conclusions about the effect of privacy or publicity on self-handicapping. The paper relates that self-handicapping is a hard theory to study because no researcher will ever be able to replicate in a laboratory the conditions an individual is in when he or she chooses to self-handicap by partying and drinking the night before a test.

Table of Contents
A Review of the Literature
Berglas and Jones: The First Self-Handicapping Study
Improving on Berglas and Jones: The Kolditz and Arkin Study
?Alcohol Consumption as a Self-Handicapping Strategy?
Taking Self-Handicapping in another Direction
Conclusion

From the Paper:

"This study, ran in 1981 by Tucker, Vuchinich, and Sobell, again used essentially the same experimental design as Berglass and Jones, with the exception that alcohol was used instead of drugs. They ran two experiments to investigate self-handicapping hypotheses made by Berglas and Jones with regards to actual alcohol consumption. They hypothesized that in both experiments subjects' alcohol consumption would vary directly with their uncertainty about their ability to succeed in a retest situation like the Berglas and Jones experiment. In the first experiment, test difficulty (solvable or insolvable problems) and performance feedback (success or no feedback) were manipulated as they were in Berglas and Jones' second experiment. Tucker and his co-researchers also manipulated the instructions given to subjects about the next test, telling them it would either be the same or more difficult."

More papers on Self-Handicapping:

• Essay # 67479 : "Substance Abuse"
• Research Paper # 18218 : "Adolescent Separation-Individuation"
• Cause and Effect Essay # 5137 : "Effects of Stigmatization"

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