January 9, 2009--Self-Sabotage
It’s bad enough out there, what with the economy in the tank and not enough time to complete everything on your to-do list, that the last thing that’s helpful is to make excuses for yourself.
To be more honest, I should be saying “we” instead of “you” since I at times am prone to shooting myself in the foot.
Perhaps, though, there is some consolation in knowing that this is an actual human psychological phenomenon called “self-handicapping” and not just simple laziness or excuse making.
Psychologists have been studying this sort of behavior since at least 1978, when Steven Berglas and Edward E. Jones used the phrase to describe students in a study who chose to take a drug (actually a placebo) even though they were told it would negatively affect their performance on an exam. (See linked New York Times article.)
Cynics might say, “Well, what else would you expect—that was in 1978 and everyone in college at the time was eager to smoke or snort anything that was passed along to them.” I certainly was.
Perhaps true, but subsequent studies have confirmed that this kind of handicapping is quite pervasive and can take many self-defeating forms. The good news is that if we can catch ourselves doing it and figure out why we lower expectations for ourselves we have a good chance of reducing its erosive power.
Since most research psychologists work at universities many of the studies about this kind of subtle excuse-making concern student behavior. In one study in which students were offered an opportunity to practice before taking an intelligence test, after scoring the tests (actually the experimenters randomly manipulated the scores), those who did “badly” and didn’t practice claimed it was because they failed to do so and thereby cushioned the blow to their self-confidence.
But there are others who point to the same kind of behavior from the world of work. One found that workers who tend to be self-handicapping often find colleagues to serve as apologists for them. So, for example, they arrange to get themselves typecast—as, say, a whiner or complainer. By doing so they set up a surrogate to lower expectations for them. “What can you expect of Charlie. He’s always unhappy. That’s just the way he is.” Neat!
In my on case, years ago when I was imagining myself or aspiring to be a writer, one of my college professors—the esteemed critic and author Lionel Trilling—wrote a note on one of my papers in which he said (and I can still quote him word-for-word), “Well written. Come see me so we can talk about your writing.”
I never took him up on his offer even though it was of great significance—imperially, he rarely saw students in his office—saying to myself he probably was just being nice while, in truth and more to the point, I didn’t push myself to see him because if I didn’t I would have a lifetime explanation, really an excuse, as to why I hadn’t become a successful writer.
If I had seen him and shown him more of my work, how would I have handled his perhaps not liking it? By sabotaging myself in advance, I never had to deal with that possibility. And, of course, I denied myself the other possibility—that he would genuinely like my writing and help me get launched!
We all know people who have not had successful careers and who have a ready array of explanations for it—I didn’t have this-or-that degree, I didn’t go to the right college, I have been the victim of various forms of discrimination, they prefer to hire younger people who cost them less, no one ever gives serious consideration to my ideas.
Of course, in some, even many circumstances this can be true. But, in others, the person offering these self-generated justifications for why they’ve been unappreciated, didn’t advance, or were underpaid, in advance, sheltered themselves from disappointment or failure, claiming to themselves that their ideas wouldn’t be welcome (and therefore chose not to offer them) or didn’t make the case that their lack of an MBA is more than offset by the quality of their work (while opting not to purse that MBA) rather than doing the things in their control to give themselves the best chances to succeed. In fact, they often did the opposite by preemptively applying limits to their own possibilities.
Essential to overcoming this inclination to self-sabotage is the need to be honest with ourselves. To do the hard work to catch ourselves when we are in the midst of doing things that impede us and, when we do, struggle to halt that self-handicapping algorithm. And, of course, take the risk—and it is one—to try a different approach that admittedly makes us more vulnerable.
The failure to make this effort will mean that too many of us will remain our own victims and never come to understand that this self-sabotage is mostly about protecting our egos—our most fragile yet defining of human quality.
To be more honest, I should be saying “we” instead of “you” since I at times am prone to shooting myself in the foot.
Perhaps, though, there is some consolation in knowing that this is an actual human psychological phenomenon called “self-handicapping” and not just simple laziness or excuse making.
Psychologists have been studying this sort of behavior since at least 1978, when Steven Berglas and Edward E. Jones used the phrase to describe students in a study who chose to take a drug (actually a placebo) even though they were told it would negatively affect their performance on an exam. (See linked New York Times article.)
Cynics might say, “Well, what else would you expect—that was in 1978 and everyone in college at the time was eager to smoke or snort anything that was passed along to them.” I certainly was.
Perhaps true, but subsequent studies have confirmed that this kind of handicapping is quite pervasive and can take many self-defeating forms. The good news is that if we can catch ourselves doing it and figure out why we lower expectations for ourselves we have a good chance of reducing its erosive power.
Since most research psychologists work at universities many of the studies about this kind of subtle excuse-making concern student behavior. In one study in which students were offered an opportunity to practice before taking an intelligence test, after scoring the tests (actually the experimenters randomly manipulated the scores), those who did “badly” and didn’t practice claimed it was because they failed to do so and thereby cushioned the blow to their self-confidence.
But there are others who point to the same kind of behavior from the world of work. One found that workers who tend to be self-handicapping often find colleagues to serve as apologists for them. So, for example, they arrange to get themselves typecast—as, say, a whiner or complainer. By doing so they set up a surrogate to lower expectations for them. “What can you expect of Charlie. He’s always unhappy. That’s just the way he is.” Neat!
In my on case, years ago when I was imagining myself or aspiring to be a writer, one of my college professors—the esteemed critic and author Lionel Trilling—wrote a note on one of my papers in which he said (and I can still quote him word-for-word), “Well written. Come see me so we can talk about your writing.”
I never took him up on his offer even though it was of great significance—imperially, he rarely saw students in his office—saying to myself he probably was just being nice while, in truth and more to the point, I didn’t push myself to see him because if I didn’t I would have a lifetime explanation, really an excuse, as to why I hadn’t become a successful writer.
If I had seen him and shown him more of my work, how would I have handled his perhaps not liking it? By sabotaging myself in advance, I never had to deal with that possibility. And, of course, I denied myself the other possibility—that he would genuinely like my writing and help me get launched!
We all know people who have not had successful careers and who have a ready array of explanations for it—I didn’t have this-or-that degree, I didn’t go to the right college, I have been the victim of various forms of discrimination, they prefer to hire younger people who cost them less, no one ever gives serious consideration to my ideas.
Of course, in some, even many circumstances this can be true. But, in others, the person offering these self-generated justifications for why they’ve been unappreciated, didn’t advance, or were underpaid, in advance, sheltered themselves from disappointment or failure, claiming to themselves that their ideas wouldn’t be welcome (and therefore chose not to offer them) or didn’t make the case that their lack of an MBA is more than offset by the quality of their work (while opting not to purse that MBA) rather than doing the things in their control to give themselves the best chances to succeed. In fact, they often did the opposite by preemptively applying limits to their own possibilities.
Essential to overcoming this inclination to self-sabotage is the need to be honest with ourselves. To do the hard work to catch ourselves when we are in the midst of doing things that impede us and, when we do, struggle to halt that self-handicapping algorithm. And, of course, take the risk—and it is one—to try a different approach that admittedly makes us more vulnerable.
The failure to make this effort will mean that too many of us will remain our own victims and never come to understand that this self-sabotage is mostly about protecting our egos—our most fragile yet defining of human quality.
posted by Steven Zwerling at
6:05 AM
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