Alcohol consumption as a self-handicapping strategy in women.

Abstract

This experiment assessed whether women self-handicap with alcohol consumption prior to engaging in a social evaluation task, which may be more relevant to their self-esteem than the intellectual tasks used in past self-handicapping studies on substance use. In a 2 X 2 factorial design, 113 women who were evaluated as normal drinkers performed either a solvable or an insolvable social judgment task and then received either success feedback or no feedback. Subjects received access to alcoholic and nonalcoholic beverages while awaiting a retest. The study terminated before the retest. The self-handicapping hypothesis that noncontingent success would produce relatively greater alcohol consumption was not supported. Regardless of feedback, insolvable test subjects consumed more alcohol than did solvable test subjects. These findings suggest that the hypothesis may be limited as a general model of alcohol consumption in both sexes.Recent research on the determinants of human alcohol consumption has focused on the protective function alcohol may serve in maintaining self-esteem. Known as the self-handicapping hypothesis , behaviors that can serve as plausible excuses for performance failure (e.g., alcohol consumption, accentuation of physical problems, low effort) are posited to (a) protect self-esteem following failure by creating ambiguity about the causes of failure and (b) enhance selfesteem following success by increasing ability attributions because the success occurred despite the handicap. Such behaviors should be most probable when past success on tasks similar to those impending are viewed as noncontingent on ability and due to external factors such as luck, appearance, or social status.Several studies found that males self-handicap with alcohol consumption (Tucker, Vuchinich, & Sobell, 1981; cf. Isleib, Vuchinich, & Tucker, in press) and (fictitious) drug use (e.g.,

Effects of Self-Handicapping Strategies on Anxiety before Athletic Performance

“…In contrast, somatic anxiety stems from conditioned responses to aspects 2 of competition, such as the presence of an audience (Martens et al, 1990;Jones, 1995). As self-3 presentational concerns regarding an upcoming sports performance have been shown to be more 4 strongly correlated with cognitive than somatic sport competition anxiety (Bray,Martin,& 5 Widmeyer, 2000; Wilson & Eklund, 1998), it makes sense that a strategy designed to allay self-6 presentational concerns (i.e., self-handicapping), would have greater effects on cognitive than 7 somatic elements of anxiety. 8…”

Effects of Deviant Child Behavior on Parental Alcohol Consumption: Stress‐Induced Drinking in Parents of ADHD Children

“…Indeed, when faced with the clearly difficult task, mothers with a positive Family History in this sample showed the same pattern of SID as fathers. This contrasts with reported gender differences in the relationship between alcohol and stress 34–36 and suggests that the influence of family history may override gender effects. One study that investigated the stress‐response‐dampening (SRD) effects of alcohol reported that when family history of alcoholism was taken into account, men and women at high risk showed equivalent enhancement of an SRD effect 37 .…”

Individual Differences in Undergraduate Student Athletes: The Roles of Perfectionism and Trait Anxiety on Perception of Procrastination Behavior

“…Nevertheless, Hirt, McCrea, and Boris (2003) examined gender differences in observer reactions to behavioral self-handicapping and showed that both males and females were critical of behavioral self-handicapping. Consequently, we chose one type of behavioral self-handicap (reveler drinker), considered to be maladaptive behavior and used by males and females (Berglas & Jones, 1978;Bordini, Tucker, Vuchinich, & Rudd, 1986). Some students often take part in a period of partying before a task completion.…”