Personality precursors of self-handicapping as а form of proactive coping behavior

- Носенко, Діна Володимирівна (2015) Personality precursors of self-handicapping as а form of proactive coping behavior Dissertation candidate thesis, Дніпропетровський національний університет імені Олеся Гончара.

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Abstract

The dissertation presents an approach to the conceptualization of a comparatively new but deeply rooted psychological phenomenon of self- handicapping which until recently has been mostly interpreted in foreign psychology as a “paradox, that isn’t” and has been introduced into the Ukrainian psychology via our translation of the Self-handicapping Scale ,designed by Jones and Rhodewalt. It has been theoretically substantiated and empirically examined, –with reference to a nearly century-long history of conceptualization of the phenomenon by Alfred Adler in terms of the “masculine protest” of a physically-disabled individual against one’s inferiority, – that self- handicapping can be categorized as a proactive emotionally-charged coping strategy which proved to be functionally equivalent to the emotion-focused and avoidance strategies of the reactive coping. The empirical study, carried out on a representative sample on a 120 undergraduate students of Oles Honchar Dnipropetrovsk National university, has shown that self-handicapping “fills in an empty space” in the proactive strategies matrix and functionally corresponds to a proactive emotionally-charged disengagement strategy, resulting in avoidance of the problem-solution, even though temporarily. It has been found out that self-handicapping correlates positively with the emotion-focused strategy of the reactive coping and negatively – with the proactive engagement coping strategy. These findings supported the first hypothesis of the research which stated a new approach to the conceptualization of self- handicapping, previously categorized by the American psychologists S. Berglas and E. Jones as a motivational strategy, aimed at protecting an individual’s sensitive ego (self-esteem). The new conceptualization of self-handicapping, substantiated in this research has allowed to single out a set of its personality precursors which differ from the previously described personality factors, singled out when the phenomenon was categorized as a motivational strategy. Unlike the such factors as social shyness, hypochondria and situational anxiety which were associated with the motivational categorization of self-handicapping, we have identified in this research quite different personality precursors of self-handicapping, which, in our opinion, more adequately reveal the meaning of the phenomenon and describe its behavioral correlates. We have substantiated that there exists a hierarchy of personality factors causing self-handicapping. The disposition to the personality self-evolution, assessed in this research with the help of the new inventory, recently designed by Ukrainian psychologists S. Kusikova, was statistically proved to top the hierarchy which also includes conscientiousness as one of the global personality traits, extraversion and neuroticism. While conscientiousness and extraversion negatively correlate with self-handicapping, neuroticism shows a significant positive correlation. Besides, our empirical data showed that self-handicapping also negatively correlates with belief in self-efficacy. We have also found its negative correlation with mental health continuum, assessed by C. Keyes scale. The findings appear to prove the hypothesized personality-related coping nature of self-handicapping, moreover no significant correlations of the phenomenon with self-esteem have been found which puts to doubt its’ previously claimed motivational function or at least suggest its multi-functionality nature of the phenomenon.

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