Relationship Among Self-handicapping, Self-esteem And Effort Belief Of Junior Students

Self-handicapping is a special way of self-protection which means one intentionally sets obstacles in order to protect himself. In recent years, the research on self-handicapping have achieved great success abroad, but there is still great controversy. For the motivation of self-handcapping and gender differences in behavioral self-handicapping, the researcher could not give a identical view. Based on this point, this study aimed to know the situation of self-handicapping in junior students, to explore the relationships between motivation variables and self-handicapping, to validate whether the conclusion of self-handicapping in foreign could be accepted by ourselves. Moreover, the motivation of self-handicapping could be explained. In order to offer more accurate evidence, We analyed three categories of self-handicapping separately.This study consisted of three studies. Study 1 designed junior student self-handicapping scale with the methods of literature analysis and open questionnaire.According to analysis results, junior student self-handicapping could be divided into three categories.Study 2 used questionnaire method adopted with a sample of 394 subjects, exploring the situation of self-handicapping in junior students and their development characteristic of gender and grade. Study 3 used questionnaire mehtod adopted with a sample of 394 subjects, exploring the relationships among self-esteem, effort belief and self-handicapping.Th following conclusions could be drawn from this study:1. Junior student self-handicapping could be divided into three categories and they were self-excuse, behavioral and other-excuse;2. The self-designed self-handicapping scale had been proven to be of fine reliability and validity, which could be uesed as a good tool to measure self-handicapping.3. Junior student self-handicapping was not too serious, and there was significant difference among three categories, in which other-excuse was utilized most and self-excuse least;4. There was significant difference on grade in the whole self-hanciappiing, self-excuse, other-excuse, in which grade 3 was higher than grade 1 in these dimensions, but behavioral self-handicapping was not;5. Boys were not significant difference on grade in three categories and the whole scores, but girls were not difference on grade in the whole scores, self-excuse and other-excuse;6. There was significant difference on gender in the whole scores and three dimensions, and boys used this method more, but the mutual effect between gender and grade was low.7. The students with low self-esteem used self-handicapping more, and self-deprecate was a significant negative predicator of three categories self-handicapping, while self-enhancement was a significant positive predicator of other-excuse;8. Effort belief was a significant negative predicator of three categories of self-handicapping;9. People were willing to use self-excuse and behavioral for self-protection, and other-excuse for self-protection and self-enhancement.