Why do we self-sabotage?
What the first experiment on self-handicapping found, what the habit protects and costs, and what research says lowers the pull of the excuse.
Answer to the question
Why do we self-sabotage?
We self-sabotage because an obstacle changes what a result can mean. In the first experiment, male students who had a success they could not explain preferred a drug said to impair performance, which gave a ready excuse for a later failure. Later work found the habit protects belief in ability while lowering effort and score.
Key takeaways
- In the first experiment on self-handicapping, male students given a success they could not account for preferred a drug said to impair performance, an obvious cause for any later poor score (Berglas and Jones, 1978).
- Students who self-handicapped reported less effort and performed worse, yet kept positive beliefs about their ability in that domain (McCrea and Hirt, 2001).
- In a questionnaire study of 449 students, more self-handicapping went with a static view of intelligence and with performance goals, an association and not a cause (Alesi and Pepi, 2014).
- Matthew Syed's Black Box Thinking argues that learning needs failure to be visible, and counts self-handicapping among the ways people protect a verdict on their ability.
- After negative feedback, affirming oneself in the threatened domain lowered claimed self-handicapping, but only among participants with high dispositional self-esteem (Tandler and colleagues, 2014).
This article is general information about research on how people protect their self-image. It is not medical or psychological advice. If you have concerns about your wellbeing, speak to a GP or another qualified professional. Medical review: Reja Batool.
Self-sabotage often works as a protective move, a way of making a possible failure explainable before it happens. In the first experiment on the idea, students given a success they could not account for chose a drug said to impair their next performance, which gave any poor score an obvious cause.
Steven Berglas and Edward Jones ran that study decades ago and named the pattern self-handicapping, the term researchers still use for most of what people call self-sabotage. The everyday word is wider than the research term, so this piece stays with what the studies measured.
Why does self-sabotage buy an excuse before the result arrives?
When ability is on the line and the outcome is uncertain, an obstacle changes what the outcome can mean. Failure with an obstacle points to the obstacle, and success in spite of one points to ability. That double payoff is the logic behind this kind of self-sabotage and behind the drug choice. The students chose between a drug said to help performance and one said to impair it. In the first experiment the success feedback either looked accidental or reflected real knowledge, and the male students who received the accidental kind preferred the impairing drug.
The effect did not appear among the female students in that experiment. The second experiment repeated the male pattern and found that success feedback was critical to it.
Picture a student who has not opened the notes the night before an exam, or a colleague who agrees to present after a single rehearsal. These are illustrations of self-sabotage, not cases, and both show the same trade: an hour of preparation given up for a ready cause, and in both the cause is in place before the result is known.
What does the protected belief cost afterwards?
The cost of self-sabotage shows up once the result arrives. In work by Sean McCrea and Edward Hirt, students who self-handicapped reported less effort and performed worse, yet kept positive beliefs about their ability in that domain. Changes in those beliefs also accounted for changes in global self-esteem. The excuse protected the belief, and the score paid for it. Holding a poor result beside an intact belief in ability is the kind of tension described in What is cognitive dissonance.
The mind can carry on the work of self-sabotage afterwards. In five studies, McCrea found that in self-handicapping settings, thoughts of how things could have gone better raised self-esteem and lowered motivation for future performance. The effects depended on the person's goals and on what the thoughts contained.
How do goals and verdicts shape the habit?
A questionnaire study of 449 school and university students fits that picture of self-sabotage. Students who reported more self-handicapping strategies also tended to hold a static view of intelligence and to pursue performance goals, which aim at showing ability and not building it. Marianna Alesi and Annamaria Pepi measured these by questionnaire, so the link is an association and does not show which way the influence runs.
Matthew Syed makes a related argument in Black Box Thinking. Learning depends on failure being visible, and a setting that reads failure as a verdict on ability gives people every reason to protect the verdict; he counts self-handicapping among the ways they do it. A static view of ability turns each result into a ruling, and an excuse is a cheap way to appeal the ruling in advance.
We read self-sabotage as a trade and not a flaw. The person gives up some chance at the result to keep a belief intact, which is a reasonable thing to want. The trade also explains why being told to try harder tends to miss, because high effort followed by a poor result removes the excuse and leaves ability on show. That is our interpretation of the findings and not something the studies tested.
Leaving work late is the most familiar version of self-sabotage, since a late start hands over a ready cause for a weak result, though people delay for broader reasons too, as set out in Why do we procrastinate. The pull is strongest where the stakes attach to the self, which is also the territory of Why are we so afraid of failing.
What lowers the pull of the excuse?
The goal findings point to a lever on self-sabotage. Where the aim is learning, a result is information, and where the aim is to show ability, a result is a ruling. Neither framing removes the wish to look capable; each changes what a poor result is taken to say about the person. Praise that points at effort and not at talent is one way the framing gets set early, a question taken up in Is praising effort better than praising talent.
The thread through these findings is the number of meanings a result is allowed to have. A test that can only mean one thing leaves nothing to explain away, and a task framed around learning gives a poor result a use, since it shows what to change. A task framed around proving ability gives a poor result one use only, as evidence about the person, and an obstacle that rewrites that evidence becomes worth buying. That is a reading of the findings, and the studies above do not test it directly.
A second route to less self-sabotage works on the person's sense of worth before the task. In a study by Sarah Tandler and colleagues, 56 female college students received negative feedback on an intelligence test, and could affirm themselves either in the threatened domain or in an unrelated one. Those who affirmed in the threatened domain claimed less self-handicapping afterwards, though only participants with high dispositional self-esteem showed it. The authors read this as a limit on how far one self-protective strategy can stand in for another.
Three practical moves follow from the findings, offered as readings and not as a tested programme:
- Give a result one meaning, by stating in advance what the outcome will show, so no second explanation is available to reach for.
- Ask for the process, what was tried and what changed, so that effort stays visible and is credited.
- Let a person name a strength in the area being tested before a hard task, since that lowered claimed self-handicapping in one study, among higher self-esteem participants.
Whichever of the three moves a person tries, the first step is small: agree on what the result will show before the work begins, and write it down.
Common questions
Why do we self-sabotage?
Because an obstacle changes what a result can mean. In the first experiment, male students who had a success they could not explain preferred a drug said to impair performance, which would give a ready excuse for a later failure.
Is self-sabotage the same as self-handicapping?
Self-handicapping is the research term, and it covers much of what people call self-sabotage. The studies measure choices and reported strategies made to protect an impression of ability.
Does self-sabotage work?
It protects belief in ability. In one study, students who self-handicapped reported less effort and performed worse, yet kept positive domain beliefs.
Can self-sabotage be reduced?
One study found that affirming oneself in the threatened domain lowered later claimed self-handicapping, but only among participants with high dispositional self-esteem. Clear standards and attention to process are readings of the wider findings.
Sources
Syed, M. Black Box Thinking. Seed book; vault hub Books/Black Box Thinking.
Berglas, S., & Jones, E. E. (1978). Drug choice as a self-handicapping strategy in response to noncontingent success. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36(4), 405-417. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.36.4.405 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.36.4.405
McCrea, S. M., & Hirt, E. R. (2001). The role of ability judgments in self-handicapping. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27(10), 1378-1389. doi:10.1177/01461672012710013 https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672012710013
McCrea, S. M. (2008). Self-handicapping, excuse making, and counterfactual thinking: Consequences for self-esteem and future motivation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(2), 274-292. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.95.2.274 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.95.2.274
Alesi, M., & Pepi, A. (2014). Self-handicapping strategies and motivational profile: A study with secondary school and college students. Giornale italiano di psicologia. doi:10.1421/79059 https://doi.org/10.1421/79059
Tandler, S., Schwinger, M., Kaminski, K., & Stiensmeier-Pelster, J. (2014). Self-affirmation buffers claimed self-handicapping? A test of contextual and individual moderators. Psychology, 5(5), 321-327. doi:10.4236/psych.2014.55042 https://doi.org/10.4236/psych.2014.55042