Personal, interpersonal, and situational influences on behavioral self-handicapping.

This study explored the combined effects of personal factors (participant sex), interpersonal factors (experimenter sex), and situational factors (performance feedback) on two forms of behavioral self-handicapping. Participants received non-contingent success or failure feedback concerning their performance on a novel ability and were given the opportunity to self-handicap before performing again. Behavioral self-handicapping took the form of (a) exerting less practice effort (practice) or (b) choosing a performance-debilitating tape (choice). Men practiced least after failure feedback and chose a debilitating tape if they were interacting with a female experimenter. Generally, across all participants in both choice and practice conditions, high performance concern and the presence of a male experimenter led to the most self-handicapping. Results are interpreted in terms of self-presentational concerns that emphasize a desire to impress or an awareness of the female or male experimenter's acceptance of self-handicappers.