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ABSTRACT
Many research revealed that Self-Handicapping is associated with the students' personal motivations, academic achievement, global self-esteem and certainty of self-esteem. This study is designed to find out the relationship between Self-Handicapping, and Achievement in Mathematics of learners of chult age (adolescence). Using Multi-stage cluster sampling 204 secondary school students of Thiruvananthapuram educational sub district were selected for the study. Participants were directed to fill in the self-reported Self-Handicapping Scale; the Achievement score in Mathematics were taken from the school records. Data has been analyzed with SPSS-16th version. Students of chult age have a moderate level of Self-Handicapping and High level of Achievement in Mathematics but there is a negative low relationship between SelfHandicapping and Achievement in Mathematics. This study disclosed that self-Handicapping and achievement in Mathematics are correlated. Thus, a positive variation in Self-Handicapping will make a corresponding decrease in Achievement in Mathematics and vice-versa
Keywords: Self-Handicapping, Achievement in Mathematics, Secondary Schools, Chult age.
While many people struggle to achieve success, the literature on Self-Handicapping shows that another group may only be motivated to give the appearance of wanting to achieve (Thomas & Gadbois, 2007), this process is called Self-Handicapping. The concept of Self-Handicapping was introduced by Edward, E.Jones and Steven Berglas (1978). There basic observation was that people often create or at least claim obstacle to success in performance when people have worries about their capability to be successful and when disappointment confirms that the ability is lacking. Jones & Berglas (1978) argued that the Self handicapper is capitalizing on the attributional principles of discounting and augmentation (Kelly, 1972). Self-Handicapping has been defined in a variety of ways by researchers, but most of them agree that it involves creating obstacles to successful performance on tasks that the individual considers important (Covington, 1992; Rhodewalt, 1994). (Kelley, 1971) argued the obstacles may interfere with performance but allow the person to discount responsibility for failure and augment credit for success. The purpose of Self-Handicapping is to deflect the attributions of others away from low ability causes and towards circumstantial or situational causes of failure; that is, to blur the link between ability and poor performance (Harris & Snyder, 1986; Urdan, Midgley, & Anderman, 1998).
Self-Handicapping takes many forms and may be behavioural or verbal (Leary...