A Study On College Students' Self-handicapping And Its Relationship With Big-five Personality And Emotional Intelligence

Self-handicapping refers to the behavior of previously making an excuse for the upcoming failure or intentionally placing an obstacle in the way of one's own success, on the purpose of protecting or enhancing one's sense of self-worth in achievement situations. It is virtually a passive adapting behavior, which, with a strong indication of self-deceiving, would be adverse for one's growth in the long run. It have been found that self-handicapping is closely associated with various factors such as one's dispositional self-esteem, self-efficiency and achievement goals. Based on summarizing the extant researches at home and abroad, the present study further explored, from the aspects of personality traits and emotional intelligence, the psycho-dynamical mechanism of self-handicapping, especially investigated the mediating effect of personality traits on the relationship between emotional intelligence and self-handicapping.By the questionnaire on 1094 college students, these conclusions were found:1. There were some self-handicapping behaviors among college students. There was significant interaction effect between grade and school type on college students' self- handicapping.2. There was significant main effect of school type on the traits of neuroticism and extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness. There were significant main effect of grade and interaction effect between gender and major on the trait of openness to experience. There were significant main effects of gender and grade on the trait of agreeableness. There was significant main effect of gender on the trait of conscientiousness.3. There were significant main effects of grade and school type on college students' emotional intelligence.4. Self-handicapping was affected by college students' big- five personality, associating positively with neuroticism and negatively with agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion and openness to experience. Different personality traits had different predictive effects on self-handicapping, with neuroticism the most powerful predictor.5. College students' personality traits performed a totally intermediary function between self-handicapping and emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence affected self-handicapping indirectly through neuroticism, extraversion, agreeableness and conscientiousness.