Ready to Fail

One of my favorite sayings is, “hindsight is always 20/20;” and it is.  As I continue my education, my repertoire of knowledge grows; and as my knowledge grows, I find out more about myself and how I operate and why.  When I come across something in one of my readings that defines me to a tee, I take a moment to reflect on my past self and contemplate on who I’d like to be in the future.  If who I was in the past is someone I like, I stay the path; if the person I was is someone I don’t like so much, I decide on a course of action to better myself.  I had one of these epiphanies while reading about self-serving strategies and self-handicapping last week.

Self-serving strategies are those that protect our self concept or enhance our self image; in other words they allow us to think that we’re rock-stars when we’re, more than likely, behaving like amateurs.  In the long run, they are self defeating, even though they seem positive when we use them. One self-serving strategy is called self-handicapping and it refers to when you create barriers to successful performance(s) prior to (or simultaneously with)  an achievement task.  Or simply put, people tend to handicap their own performances on tasks so that they have a ready excuse for failure.  For example: a few years ago, I knew that I had an important test coming up in a coupe days, but instead of cracking down and studying for it when I wasn’t in class, I decided to hang out with my friends and go out.  Needless to say, the day of the test I was feeling pretty anxious and under-prepared because I had only put in an hour of study time.  After the test I had felt that I had done pretty well considering, but when I got the test back, I had received about 10 points lower than I had expected.  But instead of owning that I was to blame because I slacked and decided to go out with my friends,  I convinced myself that the teacher had put stuff on the test that we hadn’t been taught and that I did good considering how long I studied.  Now I’d convinced myself that I had done well, even though I hadn’t; I also condoned my behavior which exacerbated my use of self-handicapping.  It became a vicious circle from which I was never able to break; until now.

When I read those definitions, all my incidents of slacking before a test or procrastinating before major project flooded my mind.  How many times had I opted to watch that extra episode of my favorite TV show instead of study? Or how many times had I chosen to go hang out with friends instead of work on a project I knew was due in a few days? Unfortunately, too many times to count.  And in that moment I was ashamed, but at the same time relieved.  I had always known I had a tendency to procrastinate, but I had never known why; now I had answers to my 15+ year dilemma.  I felt ashamed because I knew that due to my use of self-handicapping, I allowed myself to develop a negative academic self-concept, it negatively impacted my academic performance, lead to long term negative effects of other measures of self achievement, and interfered with my ability to take responsibility for my own performance (even when it’s a positive and successful outcome).  On the other hand, I felt relieved because now I was able to see my past clearly (man that hindsight I tell ya) and since who I saw was someone I didn’t admire, I was able to think about who I wanted to become.  I now have the information and knowledge to make a better path for myself and change who I am as a student, and person, for the better.

 

 

Schneider, F. W., Gruman, J. A., & Coutts, L. M. (2012). Applied Social Psychology. SAGE Publications, Inc.

2 comments

  1. Michael Grattan

    I can totally relate to your post. I have also taken those exams where some of the question were not covered in the lecture or textbook I procrastinate a lot when it comes to writing essay, blogs, and major papers. The biggest problem I have wants to be perfect and that I always worry my writing will not be as good as the rest of the class. I want everything to be perfect which leads to procrastination by putting writing assignments off until the last minute writing and self-handicapping. It keeps going round and round. I have to get off this circular ride and move in a positive direction.

    Thank you for your post, it was great. It has also made me think and start moving down that positive path.

  2. It seems as if there would be a relationship between self-serving behaviors/cognitions and learned helplessness. Learned helplessness entails a repeated exposure to unpleasant stimuli with no escape, resulting in a consistent attitude of hopelessness and helplessness. People who experience learned helplessness may feel that nothing can change or “help” their situations, so they take no alternative stances or actions, even though they most often can. Both situations seem to contribute to a dissonance. Self-serving biases take on a dissonance between what the individual contributes versus the outcome of the contribution; whereas learned helplessness brings a dissonance between what the person feels about what they can contribute and the expected outcome of the contribution. I am interested in how demographics that have faced institutional discrimination avoid or circumvent falling into the trap of learned helplessness or developing self-serving biases. Maybe they employee positive cognitions based on reasoning and logic, but its hard to do so when most, if not all, discrimination is based on illogical fallacies.

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