The Effection Of Self-handicapping On Impression Management

Self-handicapping is a common self-protection strategy, in order to protect self-esteem in an uncertain situation and do impression management. But how this strategy works, the results are not consistent. This study want to check how the strategy affect spectator's emotion and action. There are two experiments in this study:Experiment 1 examined self-handicapping behavior on the spectator' s emotional. The results showed that the experimental group have more strongly negative emotions, their response time was significantly lower than the control group. Different sexes have different reaction in face of different self-handicapping behavior, their emotional response have significant difference.Experiment 2 examined bystander's decision-making in self-handi-capping situation. The results showed that self-handicapping can not be absolutely influence others decision-making, people's decision-making behavior will determined by other factors such as task-related factor or SHS tendency.Overall, the experimental data prove that the effectiveness of self-handicapping in self-protection is limited and unstable, the spectator' s feelings and evaluation of this strategy will be affected by gender, behavior, self-handicapping tendencies, and successful experience and other factors, people who want to use this to protect their values is difficult, while at the same time the use of the strategy will result in loss of cognitive resources, reducing the probability of success and other dangerous, so we need to consider carefully.