Personality and the Influence of Positive and Negative Feedback on Self-Handicapping

Sammanfattning

Self-handicapping is a poorly understood defense strategy that plausibly undermines a person's chance of success. The present study examines relations between self-handicapping and the HEXACO-personality traits; namely, Honesty-Humility, Emotionality, Xtraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, and Openness. An aim is to shed new light on why some people are more prone to debilitating self-handicapping behaviors than others. Twenty-four participants completed the HEXACO-personality inventory and five arithmetic tests varying in difficulty with pseudo-randomized (false) feedback given to each participant after each arithmetic test. Self-handicapping was operationalized as participants' choice to rest, instead of practice, between each test. The data were analyzed using binomial logistic regression which revealed significant associations for Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Openness, and Emotionality as predictors of practice. The overall model for all 6 traits displayed reasonable predictive ability, where high scorers on Emotionality, Conscientiousness and Openness were less likely to self-handicap, while high scorers of Agreeableness were more likely to self-handicap. A closer examination of the significant traits was conducted at the facet level. Results partly align with previous research, but further research is recommended on the subject. Limitations, conclusions, and further research are discussed for potential implementation.