Self-esteem, Self-handicapping Behavior An Empirical Study Of Situational Factors On The Junior High School Students

Self-regulation is a hot issue in current study. In this thesis, the writer divides self-regulation into two parts, that is, target-oriented regulation and self-oriented regulation, and focuses on the important value of the latter to satisfy individuals' psychological need and self-development.Self-handicapping, one kind of self-oriented regulation, enables individual to protect his self-esteem by constructing or claiming obstacles to successful performance and escaping from ability attribution. Based on the previous literatures, the study explores two ambiguous aspects in this field: one is whether self-esteem is the predictable variable of self-handicapping, and the other is whether self-handicapping is used to control others' attribution or self-attribution. With the quasi-experimental method, we conduct this study in the instructional field by inviting 123 middle school students. The results show that:(1) Self-esteem is not a predictable variable of self-handicapping in middle school students; (2) Middle school students use handicapping to control others' attribution; (3) Self-esteem and the environment have no interaction effect on self-handicapping in middle school students; (4) The students handicap with complex feeling.