Abstract
One of my most vivid childhood memories centers around a playground ritual that I repeatedly faced. Because my family moved frequently, I found myself having to meet a new group of peers at the beginning of each school year. Being a grade-school male, a typical ceremony involved taking the new kid (me) to the local vacant lot and having him fight a string of other males until a place in the pecking order was established. After a few of these “educational” squirmishes in which I fought my way up through several bouts until I had settled somewhere in the middle of the “male hierarchy,” I struck upon a new strategy. Instead of beginning at the bottom of the fighting hierarchy, I somehow saw that there might be advantages in starting right at the top. In other words, I expressly asked to fight the biggest, meanest kid in the entire schoolyard. And, of course, he pounded on me until he tired of this activity. But, much to my delight, I found that I did not have to fight any more. So, as I had vaguely hoped would be the case, there were some advantages to my psychological dive. Indeed, by picking the toughest kid on the playground, I not only shortened the entire sequence into one fight, but I also found that I was able to preserve some semblance of esteem and control in this very difficult situation. After all, who could be expected to succeed against such a gorilla? And, however long I did last in such a fight seemed like such a valiant effort against insurmountable odds.
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Snyder, C.R. (1990). Self-Handicapping Processes and Sequelae . In: Self-Handicapping. The Springer Series in Social / Clinical Psychology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0861-2_4
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