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All over the world; measures have been implemented to contain the novel Sars-CoV-2 virus since its outbreak in the beginning of 2020. These measures—among which social distancing and contact restrictions were most prominent—may have an overall effect on people’s psychological well-being. The present study seeks to examine whether lockdown measures affected people’s well-being; anxiety; depressive symptoms during the lockdown and whether these effects could be explained by reduced satisfaction of the basic psychological needs of autonomy and relatedness. N = 1086 participants of different ages and educational levels from all over Germany reported strong declines in autonomy and well-being; small declines in relatedness satisfaction; moderate increases in anxiety and depressive symptoms. These effects were stronger for people with moderate to bad subjective overall health. Latent change modeling revealed that, especially, decreases in autonomy satisfaction led to stronger decreases in well-being as well as stronger increases in anxiety and depressive symptoms; whereas decreases in relatedness had much weaker effects. Our results imply differential effects depending on individual preconditions; but also more generally that peoples’ need for autonomy was most strongly affected by the lockdown measures, which should be considered as important information in planning future lockdowns.

Self-handicapping is a maladaptive strategy that students employ to protect their self-image when they fear or anticipate academic failure. Instead of increasing their effort, students may harm their chances of success by procrastinating, strategically withdrawing effort, or engaging in destructive behaviors like drug abuse, so that potential failure can be attributed to these handicaps rather than to stable personal characteristics (e.g., low intelligence). A large body of research has focused on potential antecedents of students' self-handicapping, but the literature is fragmented and the evidence is often mixed. Thus, we know little about which factors have the highest potential to trigger habitual self-handicapping and to explain interindividual differences in such behaviors. This meta-analysis is the first to synthesize available evidence across a broad range of potential antecedents of academic self-handicapping reported in 159 studies and 194 independent samples (N = 81,630). The strongest associations with habitual self-handicapping were found for the personality traits conscientiousness (r = À.40) and neuroticism (r = .38) as well as stable trait-like factors such as general self-esteem (r = À.34) and fear of failure (r = .39). Rather malleable factors, such as personal achievement goals (rs = À.19 to .27), showed comparatively smaller effects. Self-handicapping assessment (scale and reliability) significantly moderated most of the investigated associations, thereby implying higher internal validities for some measures compared with others. The reported findings provide important insights into mechanisms of and possible starting points for interventions against self-handicapping in the academic domain. Educational Impact and Implications StatementWhat factors might lead students to strategically and purposefully harm their chances of academic success-that is, to engage in academic self-handicapping? We present the first empirical synthesis of available evidence on such factors. Stable personality characteristics such as low levels of conscientiousness, lack of emotional stability, and the habitual fear of failure emerged as the most powerful predictors of self-handicapping. Students' academic motivation-the desire to learn and improve academically-functions as a protective factor. Learning environments that foster students' academic motivation and alleviate concerns about academic failure are thus needed to reduce students' self-handicapping tendencies.

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