The Blame Game

In college, your schedule is bound to get busy, so it is vital to take a step back and assess how you react to difficult situations. Personally, I may find myself staying up way too late or doing nothing of consequence, which in turn, leads me to spend less time with my friends. Not having regular social interaction with others often results in a significant negative impact on my well-being, so why do I find myself constantly staying awake until 4 am? This is an example of self-handicapping. Another example could be a student who decides to go to a party the night before a final. Why would anyone do this? Self-handicapping is the term that describes when someone puts obstacles in their way that prevents them from an otherwise positive outcome in order to protect themselves from potential harm. By placing an obstacle in your path you then shift the blame of the negative outcome away from yourself. If I stay up late and therefore am too tired to go out with friends the next day, at least I do not have to worry about not being invited - I was exhausted anyway, so it would not matter if they had asked me to hang out or not. If the student does poorly on the exam, it is not their fault they did poorly; they were just hungover!

Self-handicapping involves shifting the blame of the fault and thereby protecting your self-esteem, and your evaluation of self-worth. Not being invited out, or doing poorly on an exam, can land a significant blow to your feelings of self-worth, but by creating an external force that is now the reason behind the shortcoming, it “proves” that the fault had nothing to do with you at all. It was all because of one too many drinks- ah, YouTube videos. All of this is also part of the self-serving bias, where people tend to attribute their success to things they actively do, and assume failure stems from external sources that they had little to no control over.

Self-handicapping can manifest itself differently in each individual and any given situation, so you have to get to know yourself and understand how you typically react to stress. Know that it is important to take responsibility for your actions and understand the reasoning behind what you decide to do. Did I stay up late completing assignments? Or could I have used that unnecessarily squandered time to see my friends? Was a bad exam grade the result of spontaneous outside forces? Or did you have a little too much fun the night before in an attempt to shift the fault away from yourself for not studying enough? While it can be hard to shoulder the blame for something gone wrong, once you have become aware of the pattern, you can take steps in the right direction to make sure you are taking care of your physical, mental, and academic self.