Dweck describes self-handicapping as a way of protecting a favourable view of personal ability. By deliberately withholding effort, someone creates an alternative explanation for poor results: they did not try hard enough, rather than they lacked the ability to succeed. This allows them to maintain the belief that they could have performed well under different circumstances.

The same strategy can also make success seem particularly significant. If someone achieves a good result despite limited effort, they may interpret it as evidence of exceptional intelligence. In both cases, the amount of effort becomes central to how they judge their ability, rather than simply a means of improving performance.

The passage highlights a tension between protecting self-esteem and pursuing achievement. Avoiding effort may reduce the immediate threat of failure to a person’s sense of competence, but it can also restrict practice, learning and progress. Dweck presents this behaviour in the context of beliefs about whether intelligence is fixed or can develop.

Full quotation

“The strategy is termed self-handicapping (Berglas & Jones, 1978; Jones & Berglas, 1978) and the reasoning behind it goes like this: If you withhold effort and do poorly, you can still think highly of your ability, and you can preserve the belief that you could have done well had you applied yourself. If you somehow happen to do well anyway, then this is the surpreme verification of your intelligence. But by withholding effort, especially on important tasks, entity theorists may be sabotaging long-term goals for the sake of short-term judgements (Zuckerman, Kieffer, & Knee, 1998).”