Research On Exercise Self-Handicapping And Its Psychological Factors In Middle School Students

Generally speaking, the individual always wants to see own strongpoint, they will hold the positive self-appraisal by displaying with every effort. But in some situation with threatening the individual's self-appraisal, the individual cannot determine whether oneself will be successfully, thus in order to avoid defeating the possible defeat to the self-value, they often adopt the strategy which can protect oneself, one of them is the self-handicapping strategy. Self- handicapping refers to the individual designs one kind of defense behavior before in order to avoiding the threat which possibly arrives.In recent years, the self-handicapping research have make big progress in west countries, but there are few correlation research in our own, only some explorations started in the academic domain. But there is no final research on self-handicapping behavior of physical exercise in our country, in order to understanding the present situation of physical exercise self-handicapping on middle school students in our country, confirms overseas' study results of the self-handicapping whether have the universality in the different cultural context, and the influence of different exercise situation to young people students'self-handicapping and so on. This research take the self-handicapping theory as the instruction, attempt establishes the physical exercise self-handicapping scale of middle school student, Through the antecedent and consequent design, simultaneously forecasts the self-handicapping with many variables, it will compare various variables to the self-handicapping function better, thus can display explicitly the psychic mechanism behind theself-handicapping of the middle school students . Six parts are included in this research. The details are showed as following:In the first part, the purpose and framework of the research were generally put forward.In part 2, reviewed respectively the definition, theories and measures of self-handicapping. And then by teased out, some consideration on the conceptual definitions of self-handicapping and its correlations were presented.In Part 3, the conceptualization was completed by the exploratory and empirical studies, Based on these results, exercise self-handicapping scale of middle school was developed and examined. This part consists of three studies. First, an open questionnaire, was completed by middle school students (n=204). This study was aimed at investigating the mental construction of exercise self-handicapping.Second, based on the results of open questionnaire and some foreign correlated scales, develop exercise self-handicapping scale of middle school students. Carry on the item analysis to 390 students' results, and showed exercise self-handicapping of middle school students including 3 dimensions based on the exploration factor analysis results ,following as seeking excuse, reducing effort, and other enhancement.The third, verified of the effectiveness of exercise self-handicapping of middle school students by confirmatory factor analysis, and the consistency and reliability of this scale are tested. As the results reveal, this scale is reliable and effective enough to be the measurement tool for testing middle school students' exercise self-handicapping.In part 4, with the combination of delaminating and random sampling, 1448 middle school students are surveyed with the help of the Middle school students' exercise self-handicapping behavior and a series of correlated factors. 1236 copies of effective questionnaires have been withdrawn. These results show: (1) There is no significant gender differences in middle school students' exercise self-handicapping behavior. (2) There is significant age differences in middle school students' exercise self-handicapping behavior. The average scores of senior 2 students are higher than junior 1 and 2 students.(3)There are significant negative correlation between task goal orientation and exercise self-handicapping of middle school students, the students whose average scores of task goal orientation is lower, its more like to take self-handicapping behavior; but the is no significant correlation between ego goal orientation and self-handicapping. (4)There are significant negative correlation among physical self-esteem, self-efficacy and self-handicapping of middle school students.(5)Exercise self-handicapping behavior affect physical activity partly through physical self-esteem and self-efficacy. Beside influence physical activity of middle school students directly , self-handicapping can effect it through these intervening variables.In part 5, we design two experiments. First, the competition environment and evaluation styles(ego, social) both influence middle school students who have high or low self-handicapping, display their exercise behavior and performance. The results show: (1)There are no significant collation between self-handicapping and competition environment on exercise behavior.(2)There are no significant self-handicapping behavior in competition environment on high self-handicapping student.(3)There are significant correlation among self-handicapping, competition environment and evaluation style on exercise performance in middle school students. The second experiment choose physical exercise in middle school, study the influence of two exercise pattern (task goal climate, ego goal climate) on self-handicapping behavior, and wish to know which exercise pattern better fit to middle school students, and confirmation the correlated mental factor of students' self-handicapping. The results show: (1)There is more effective on reducing self-handicapping level under exercise pattern of the task goal climate .(2)There is better influence on exercise feeling by medium intensity exercise, and more effective under the task goal climate .(3) Medium intensity exercise under task goal may reduce the students' self-handicapping behavior through some intervening variables like physical self-esteem and self-efficacy, and improve their psychological benefit.In part 6, general conclusions are summarized. Some problems and weaknesses in this research are discussed and proposals on further improvement of measurement of exercise self-handicapping are accordingly tabled. Finally, the applied prospect of self-handicapping on exercise and physical education fields on middle school students are presented.