Main Argument 1: Self-Handicapping as a Proactive Attributional Strategy to Protect a Fragile but Valued Sense of Competence.
The central thesis of the book is that self-handicapping, the act of creating or claiming impediments to one’s own performance, is not the self-defeating paradox it appears to be. Instead, it is a deeply rational and strategic psychological maneuver designed to control the causal attributions that one and others make about performance outcomes. Its primary goal is not to fail, but to manage the meaning of failure and success, thereby protecting a sense of competence that is highly valued yet fundamentally insecure. This strategy operates through the psychological principles of discounting and augmentation, allowing the individual to navigate evaluative situations while shielding their core self-worth from the potentially devastating diagnosis of incompetence.
To understand this argument fully, it is essential to break it down into its constituent parts, starting with the very foundation upon which it is built: the human need to explain outcomes. Humans are, by nature, meaning-making creatures. We are not content to simply observe events; we feel a powerful, innate drive to understand why they happen. This is the domain of attribution theory, the psychological engine that powers the entire self-handicapping process. First articulated in the “naive psychology” of Fritz Heider, the theory posits that ordinary people act like amateur scientists, constantly forming hypotheses about the causes of their own and others’ behaviors. When we witness an event—a student acing an exam, an athlete fumbling a ball, a colleague giving a poor presentation—we immediately and often unconsciously begin to search for a cause.
These causes can be broadly categorized into two types: internal (or dispositional) and external (or situational). Internal attributions locate the cause within the person—their ability, effort, personality, or mood. External attributions locate the cause outside the person—the difficulty of the task, luck, the actions of others, or environmental conditions. For the self-handicapper, the most crucial and threatening of all attributions is the internal, stable attribution of ability. Unlike effort, which can be varied, or luck, which is fleeting, ability is perceived as a core, enduring component of the self. To have a failure attributed to a lack of ability is therefore not just a commentary on a single performance; it is a judgment on one’s fundamental worth and potential. It implies that future failures are likely and that the flaw is inherent. This is the catastrophic diagnosis that the self-handicapping strategy is designed to prevent.
Self-handicapping masterfully exploits two key principles of causal reasoning, as later formalized by Harold Kelley: the discounting principle and the augmentation principle. Understanding these two principles is the key to unlocking the “paradox” of self-handicapping.
The discounting principle states that our confidence in any one particular cause for an outcome is reduced, or “discounted,” when other plausible causes are also present. This is the primary protective function of self-handicapping. Consider a student who is intelligent but insecure about their ability to perform well on a high-stakes final exam. The evaluative situation presents a clear threat: if they study hard and fail, the most likely attribution, for both themselves and their professor, is a lack of ability. To avoid this painful conclusion, the student engages in self-handicapping: they go out with friends the night before the exam, ensuring they are sleep-deprived. By introducing this obstacle, they have created a powerful alternative cause for potential failure. Now, if they perform poorly, the attribution is ambiguous. Was it a lack of ability, or was it the lack of sleep? The presence of the handicap makes the latter a plausible explanation, thereby discounting the threatening attribution of incompetence. The student can tell themselves, “I failed because I was exhausted, not because I’m not smart. If I had been well-rested, I would have done fine.” The handicap has successfully clouded the diagnostic meaning of the failure, preserving the student’s self-concept of being intelligent. The same logic applies to a vast array of handicaps: the athlete who complains about a nagging (and perhaps exaggerated) injury before a major competition, the professional who procrastinates on a major report until the last minute, or the socially anxious individual who consumes alcohol before a party. In each case, a plausible, external, or unstable cause is proactively established to deflect a potential attribution to a stable, internal flaw.
The second principle, augmentation, serves the enhancement function of self-handicapping. The augmentation principle states that our confidence in a given cause is increased, or “augmented,” if the outcome occurs in the presence of an inhibitory factor. If the sleep-deprived student manages to pass the exam, or even do well, their success appears all the more remarkable. The conclusion becomes: “Wow, they succeeded despite being exhausted! They must be incredibly brilliant.” The success is not just a success; it is a triumph over adversity. The presence of the handicap augments the attribution to high ability. Similarly, the athlete who wins despite their “injury” is seen as a true champion, and the professional who delivers a decent report despite having “no time” is seen as exceptionally gifted. Self-handicapping thus creates a “no-lose” attributional situation. Failure is discounted (“It wasn’t my fault”), while success is augmented (“I’m even better than you thought”).
This brings us to the motivational core of the behavior: why would someone need such an elaborate attributional shield? The book argues that self-handicapping is not a strategy employed by those with low self-esteem, who have already resigned themselves to failure. Nor is it used by those with high, secure self-esteem, who are confident in their abilities and can weather an occasional failure without it threatening their core identity. Rather, self-handicapping is the hallmark of individuals with a fragile but positive sense of competence. These are people who have an investment in being seen—by themselves and others—as competent, but who harbor a deep-seated uncertainty about whether that competence is real.
As the book details, this fragile sense of competence often stems from a history of what is termed “non-contingent success.” This is success that is not clearly and unambiguously linked to one’s own efforts or skills. It might come from being praised for innate talent rather than hard work, succeeding on tasks that were too easy, or receiving accolades due to extraneous factors like appearance, family connections, or charm. While this history builds a positive public and private image of competence, it leaves the individual with a nagging doubt: “Am I really that good, or was it just luck? Can I do it again when it really counts?” This creates what the authors call a “competence complex”—an inordinate preoccupation with the question of one’s ability, coupled with a profound fear of receiving a definitive answer. For such an individual, an unambiguous test of their ability is the ultimate threat, because it risks shattering the positive self-image upon which their self-worth depends. Self-handicapping becomes the perfect solution. It allows them to continue participating in evaluative arenas while ensuring that the outcomes of their performances remain attributionally ambiguous, forever protecting them from the “terrible truth” of potential inadequacy.
Finally, this argument addresses a crucial debate that runs through the literature: is the primary audience for this strategy the self (private self-esteem protection) or others (public impression management)? The initial formulation by Jones and Berglas emphasized the internal, self-protective motive. The self-handicapper, they argued, engages in this behavior even in “total privacy” to deceive themselves and manage their own attributions about their worth. It is a mechanism for protecting one’s private self-concept.
However, subsequent research, notably by Kolditz and Arkin, challenged this view. They engineered experiments with more stringent controls for privacy and found that self-handicapping behavior tended to disappear when the individual believed that no one—not even the experimenter—would know about their handicap or their performance. This suggests that the strategy is fundamentally an act of impression management, a public performance designed to manipulate the perceptions of others. We create excuses for an audience to protect our social esteem.
The book ultimately navigates this debate by suggesting that the distinction between private and public esteem is, in many ways, a false dichotomy. Our internal sense of self is deeply and inextricably shaped by our perceptions of how others see us. The “internal audience” is, in essence, an internalization of the standards, values, and judgments of external audiences. Protecting one’s public image of competence is a powerful, if not primary, way of preserving one’s private sense of self-worth. Therefore, self-handicapping is a strategy that serves both masters simultaneously. It manages the attributions of others in order to buttress the attributions one makes about oneself. By securing a plausible excuse in the public square, one also secures it in the private court of self-evaluation.
In summary, the book’s foundational argument reframes self-handicapping from an irrational, self-destructive act into a sophisticated and proactive attributional strategy. It is employed by individuals with a fragile investment in their own competence to control the meaning of their performances. By strategically introducing obstacles, they exploit the psychological principles of discounting and augmentation to create an attributional win-win: failures can be blamed on the handicap, while successes are magnified by it. This allows them to navigate threatening evaluative situations without risking a definitive and potentially devastating verdict on their core ability, thereby protecting their precarious but highly-valued sense of self.