Yet Another Soccer Example

Stephen Berglas and Edward Jones (1978) first described self-handicapping as a strategy that an individual uses to build an excuse for possible failure in the future. According to the class lecture, individuals can either implement real (behavioral) self-handicapping by which they take actual steps to ensure that they do not succeed, or they can implement feigned (self-reported) handicapping by which they simply downplay their abilities so that others do not expect them to succeed. A common type of feigned self-handicapping is called sandbagging, a self-presentation strategy that people use to ensure that no one expects them to succeed (Gibson & Sachau, 2000). Self-handicapping is useful as a self-presentation strategy because it often creates a win-win situation: if no one expects you to succeed then they won't be surprised or disappointed when you fail, but if no one expects you to succeed and you do succeed then your achievement will look even greater.

I will demonstrated self-handicapping in my own life with another soccer example (I'm beginning to see concepts from social psychology pop up everywhere in sports). As most people at the school know, Southwestern's biggest rival in sports is Trinity University in San Antonio. We play Trinity every year in soccer and have never beaten them. They have a pretty good program as they have won the conference championship for the past seven years with us behind them in second place for four out of those seven. They are usually in the top ten in the nation every year when we play them, and we always give them a good game. In the two years that I have been on the team we have lost to them by one goal both times that we have played them. The first time I played them they were ranked #1 in the nation and they beat us 1-0 at home on an own goal (not by me fortunately). This past season when we played them they were #7 in the nation and they beat us 3-2 in double overtime at their place, with one of their goals coming from a dodgy penalty kick call.

The self-handicapping comes into play because we are never expected to beat them. Although we have a good program (we made it to #20 in the nation this past season), we are always the underdog going into the game. Their high ranking always gives us an opportunity to say something like, "well, they are top ten in the nation, and we are not expected to beat them, so if we lose it won't be a big deal. But if we win it will be huge!" While this isn't a great mindset, it does allow us as players and as a team to create a better self-presentation after the game is over. Personally, every time somebody asks me how the game went against Trinity this past year I always tell them, "we lost 3-2, but they were #7 in the nation so it was still pretty good for us." I also usually throw in a little self-serving bias (attributing failure to external factors) by saying that we would have won had the referee not given them that penalty.

Berglas, S., & Jones, E. E. (1978). Drug choice as a self-handicapping strategy in response to noncontingent success. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36, 405-417.