Gender & Self-Handicapping

In college, among all the annoying things my fellow students got up to, there were a couple of behaviors that inspired contempt in me.

1) Guys (and they were always guys) sitting around in the dorm lobby trying to one-up each other on what kind of grades they were capable of getting with no effort. "I got an 81 on the exam without studying." "Well, I got an 83 on this other exam and I got drunk the night before." The obvious implication was supposed to be that of course, if they had studied and behaved responsibly, they would have gotten even better grades. My reaction to this was to think: You guys are complete losers.

2) A, well, let's say friend to avoid outing the guilty party had his GRE exam the next morning and rather than going to bed, stays up late playing cards with his some of his cronies (the same losers mentioned in scenario 1 above). He later acts aggrieved that he did not receive a perfect 800 on the Quantitative section.

The term for this kind of bullshit is, in psychological parlance, self-handicapping. By doing something that can explain away poor performance (drinking, staying up late, not studying), the person has a ready-made excuse, either for himself or for others, for why he did not excel. Failure can be attributed to lack of effort rather than lack of intelligence or competence; success demonstrates that the person really is superior because they could perform so well despite (self-created) obstacles. Self-handicapping can also be feigned, of course; it is quite possible that the same people who brag about "not studying" actually did study on the sly, but want to maintain an excuse for lower than desired performance.

I always found it odd that, at Rice at least, this appeared to be such a man's game. (I admit that I did not consistently prepare for exams as I should have, but I did not risk sabotaging important tests or later brag about my lack of effort. When I didn't study enough it was because I was screwing up.) Today I read a 2003 journal article that explicitly explored the relationship between self-handicapping and gender among college students.

In a series of three studies, college student subjects read a scenario about a student named Chris who had an exam the next day. The researchers manipulated variables such as whether Chris had prepared some or none; asked a friend to see a movie the night before instead of studying, was asked by a friend to see a movie, or stayed home to study; and the grade Chris received. They found that overall, subjects did think Chris had more ability when he went to the movie and got a D versus studied and got a D. But they also rated Chris lower on many interpersonal dimensions, such as his likeability, how sympathetic the subject felt toward him, etc. So while self-handicapping did "protect" beliefs in Chris's ability, it came at a cost.

Interestingly, when the researchers varied Chris's gender, this did not impact people's perceptions of him/her. So self-handicapping looked to be as viable a strategy for women as for men.

Here are some of the results from the analysis of male versus female subjects:

"Our results indicate that men were far more lenient in their attributions of self-handicapping targets than were women. Women routinely made more negative evaluations of the self-handicapping targets relative to the control (non-self-handicapping) targets, particularly on interpersonal and characterological dimensions. Women were less willing than men to excuse self-handicapping even when alternative explanations for effort withdrawal (e.g., peer pressure) were viable. This pattern emerged consistently across all three studies, indicating that perceiver sex plays an important role in determining observer reactions to self-handicapping."

"Although both men and women acknowledged that the self-handicappers had the potential to do well in the future, it seems from the ratings of ability and motivation that women did not expect this future potential to be realized."

"In Study 3, women were more likely to attribute lack of preparation to dispositional causes such as laziness or lack of self-control or to ulterior self-handicapping motives….Moreover, on both open-ended and rating scale measures, women alone seem to acknowledge the potential ulterior motive of self-handicapping for effort withdrawal."

"The present results suggest that men are less likely to ascribe negative motivations to individuals who engage in self-handicapping behavior, whereas women have little respect for individuals who lack motivation and fail to put forth effort in important performance settings. This presents us with an interesting paradox: Those individuals most inclined to engage in behavioral self-handicapping (men) are less likely to attribute that motive to others."

I think that last statement goes too far; it isn't clear that the same "individuals" who engage in self-handicapping are less likely to attribute the motive to others. The findings pertain to men as a group. But it is still an interesting point.

I guess the "news you can use" take away from this is that your male friends, boss, professor, spouse (etc.) may be more likely to go for your real or feigned self-handicapping excuse for lower performance than your female ones are.

Source: Hirt, E. R., McCrea, S. M., & Boris, H. I. (2003). "I know you self-handicapped last exam": Gender differences in reactions to self-handicapping. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 177-193.