Abstract
Recently I went bowling for the first time in 10 years. There was a reason for my long absence from the alleys. The last time I had spent an evening trying to roll the ball toward the pins, it had perversely clung to the gutters, resulting in an abysmal score that amused by companions. Not finding this especially enjoyable, I abandoned bowling and spent the next decade developing other aspects of myself. On this particular evening, however, a new set of friends persuaded me to join them, and I found myself once again facing the long, polished wood alley surrounded by the sinister gutters and ending in the distant, glimmering pins. “Oh well,” I thought. “What difference does it make? I have nothing to lose.” And I dropped the ball as close to the center of the alley as I could, hoping it would at least roll for a while before coming to a stop. To my surprise it reached the end of the alley and knocked down several pins, delighting both me and my friends.
The notion of self-protecting strategies implies, after all, that the strategist has something to protect. There has to have been some experience of success, something in the person’s history that has created a fragile and ambiguous, but not wholly negative, self-concept... (Jones & Berglas, 1978, p. 205)
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Self, E.A. (1990). Situational Influences on Self-Handicapping. In: Self-Handicapping. The Springer Series in Social / Clinical Psychology. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-0861-2_2
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