Implicit Self-esteem And Explicit Self-esteem On Self-handicapping

Self-handicapping is such a strategy as deliberately reducing effort or exaggerating the difficulty to success before the performance by which the self-handicappers can protect their self-worth or maintain a good ability image in the eyes of others. Ss were 44 college students. Both an explicit self-report scale and an implicit test which was based on the Implicit Association Test were used in this study to explore the influence of implicit self-esteem and explicit self-esteem on self-handicapping under a natural performance situation. The results were as follows:(1)Implicit self-esteem and explicit self-esteem had different influence on self-handicapping, which shows that the dual components were uncorrelated. (2)The college students with low implicit self-esteem used more both behavioral and self-reported self-handicapping.(3)The influence of explicit self-esteem on behavioral self- handicapping is not significant.(4)There was no remarkable gender difference in behavioral self-handicapping.(5)There was interaction between explicit self-esteem and gender on self-reported self-handicapping, male college students with high explicit self-esteem reported more self-handicapping.