Elite Athletes' Perfectionistic Striving vs. Concerns as Opposing Predictors of Self-Handicapping With the Mediating Role of Attributional Style.

Self-handicapping is not only present among amateurs, but also even among the most elite athletes. The vast majority of the research investigates self-handicapping in academic context among students with mediocre performance. However, scientific examinations of predictors among top performers in the field of sports is terra incognita. Among the predictors of self-handicapping, perfectionistic strivings, and concerns as well as attributional style, were demonstrated as relevant ones among samples in prior studies. However, these links have never been examined among elite athletes who can be characterized by various aspects of perfectionism. In this study, the link between self-handicapping and perfectionistic striving and concerns was examined both directly and indirectly through the potential mediating effect of attributional style among elite athletes (N = 111) where more than half of the participants was competing at international level such as European and World Championships or Olympic Games. As it was expected, a positive relationship was found between perfectionistic concerns and self-handicapping, whereas the findings suggested a negative relationship between perfectionistic striving and self-handicapping. These connections were partially mediated by attributions for negative sport-related events. It appears that explanations for negative events are crucial in connection with protecting oneself through self-handicapping even among top athletes. The present work is a first step of a broader program in which the goal is reducing self-handicapping of top athletes through attributional retraining intervention.

Promoting a growth mindset decreases behavioral self-handicapping among students who are on the fixed side of the mindset continuum.

The present study examined the interplay between chronic intelligence beliefs, manipulated intelligence beliefs and self-handicapping processes. Prior studies showed that holding more of a fixed intelligence theory makes one vulnerable to resorting to self-protective mechanisms such as self-handicapping, while growth intelligence mindset can serve as a protective factor for self-handicapping. However, no prior studies have examined the potential interaction between pre-experimental intelligence beliefs, the manipulation of intelligence mindsets and behavioral self-handicapping. Although in our student sample (N = 101) there was no main effect of the mindset manipulations, participants with more of an initial fixed mindset benefited a lot from a brief growth mindset manipulation and displayed the lowest levels of behavioral self-handicapping. The mindset manipulation had less effect on self-handicapping of originally more of a growth-mindset individuals. These laboratory results demonstrate the benefits of growth mindset triggers which can be especially beneficial to reduce self-handicapping of young adults with more of a fixed mindset in educational settings.

Retrieval of a well-established skill is resistant to distraction: Evidence from an implicit probabilistic sequence learning task.

The characteristics of acquiring new sequence information under dual-task situations have been extensively studied. A concurrent task has often been found to affect performance. In real life, however, we mostly perform a secondary task when the primary task is already well acquired. The effect of a secondary task on the ability to retrieve well-established sequence representations remains elusive. The present study investigates whether accessing well-acquired probabilistic sequence knowledge is affected by a concurrent task. Participants acquired non-adjacent regularities in an implicit probabilistic sequence learning task. After a 24-hour offline period, participants were tested on the same probabilistic sequence learning task under dual-task or single-task conditions. Here, we show that although the secondary task significantly prolonged the overall reaction times in the primary (sequence learning) task, access to the previously learned probabilistic representations remained intact. Our results highlight the importance of studying the dual-task effect not only in the learning phase but also during memory access to reveal the robustness of the acquired skill.