Personality and Individual Differences 49 (2010) 502–505

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Personality and Individual Differences

journal homepage: www.elsevier .com/locate /paid

Self-handicapping and pain catastrophizing

Ahmet Uysal *, Qian LuDepartment of Psychology, 126 Heyne Building, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77204-5022, USA

a r t i c l e i n f o

Article history:Received 3 March 2010Received in revised form 4 May 2010Accepted 7 May 2010Available online 9 June 2010

Keywords:Self-handicappingPain catastrophizingPain

0191-8869/$ - see front matter Published by Elsevierdoi:10.1016/j.paid.2010.05.012

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +1 713 743 8500.E-mail address: auysal@uh.edu (A. Uysal).

a b s t r a c t

The present study investigated whether dispositional self-handicapping (tendency to create or claimobstacles to performance in order to protect the self from negative attributions) predicts pain catastro-phizing and self-reported pain. Based on the idea that exaggerated claims of pain provides a potentialand an easy way to self-handicap, it was hypothesized that trait self-handicapping would be related topain catastrophizing, which in turn, would be associated with higher levels of self-reported pain. A sam-ple of undergraduate students (N = 251) completed measures of self-handicapping, pain catastrophizing,and self-reported pain. It was found that self-handicapping was moderately associated with pain catas-trophizing, accounting for 20% of the variance in pain catastrophizing. Furthermore, mediation analysessuggested that pain catastrophizing fully mediated the association between self-handicapping and pain.

Published by Elsevier Ltd.

1. Introduction

Self-handicapping is a defensive strategy in which people createor claim obstacles before a performance in order to manipulateattributions after the performance (Jones & Berglas, 1978;Rhodewalt, 1990). Self-handicappers aim to protect or enhancethe self based on attribution principles of discounting and augmen-tation (Kelley, 1972). That is, if a self-handicapper is unsuccessful,the handicap accounts for the failure and the internal attributionsto self are discounted (e.g., ‘‘I didn’t do well because of my head-ache, not because of my lack of ability”). On the other hand, if aself-handicapper is successful, the ability attributions are aug-mented because the self-handicapper displayed a good perfor-mance in spite of the handicap (e.g., ‘‘I did well in spite of myheadache, I must be very capable”). Research has shown that peo-ple can self-handicap behaviorally by engaging in actual behaviorsthat would impede a performance (e.g., a student partying all nightbefore an important exam) or by claiming handicaps (e.g., an exec-utive officer claiming to be under the weather before an importantbusiness meeting) (Arkin & Baumgardner, 1985). On the otherhand, trait self-handicapping as measured by the self-handicap-ping scale (Rhodewalt, 1990) is a personality construct that reflectshabitual or chronic self-handicapping in case of a self-evaluativethreat.

Research has revealed various characteristics of self-handicap-pers. Self-handicappers are uncertain about their abilities and haveself-doubts (Berglas & Jones, 1978; Oleson, Poehlmann, Yost,Lynch, & Arkin, 2000). They have a history of non-contingent

Ltd.

success; they are uncertain about being able to repeat their pastsuccesses, and display low self-esteem (Rhodewalt, 1990). Theyalso tend to have fixed entity beliefs about competence (Rhodew-alt, 1994), believing that abilities can be demonstrated but not im-proved. Furthermore, self-handicappers have higher scores onneuroticism (Ross, Canada, & Rausch, 2002) and lower scores onperfectionism (Pulford, Johnson, & Awaida, 2005).

Recently, a set of longitudinal studies have shown that traitself-handicapping is associated with lower health and well-being,higher negative mood, more symptoms, and self-reported use ofvarious substances (Zuckerman & Tsai, 2005). Furthermore, thefindings also suggested that self-handicapping and maladjustmentreinforce each other over time. Similarly, in another study traitself-handicapping was found to be associated with lower life satis-faction (Christopher, Lasane, Troisi, & Park, 2007).

1.1. Self-handicapping and pain

Although past studies examined the association between self-handicapping and general health, we are not aware of any stud-ies that investigated associations between trait self-handicappingand pain. Only in one experimental study participants were gi-ven the opportunity to self-handicap by rating how painful thecold-pressor task was (Mayerson & Rhodewalt, 1988). In thestudy participants were told that they would be taking two ver-bal intelligence tests under different conditions. After the firsttest, half of the participants were given performance contingentsuccess feedback (control condition) and the other half was gi-ven performance non-contingent success feedback (self-handi-capping condition). Non-contingent success feedback inducesself-doubt which promotes self-handicapping. Results showed

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that participants in the self-handicapping condition reportedhigher levels of pain before taking a verbal intelligence test thandid participants in the control condition. Furthermore, they alsoattributed greater performance impairment to the pain than didthe control condition participants. Although the study of Mayer-son and Rhodewalt (1988) clearly demonstrated that individualscan report or exaggerate pain as a self-handicapping strategy, thestudy did not examine the association between trait self-handi-capping and general pain.

We propose that exaggerating pain provides a viable self-hand-icapping strategy that would be commonly endorsed by self-hand-icappers. Pain is part of our lives, everybody suffers from pain nowand then, which makes claims or exaggeration of pain an easilyaccessible strategy. Furthermore, pain is subjective and unobserv-able to others, which also makes it a convincing and a safer way toself-handicap.

1.2. Pain catastrophizing

Pain catastrophizing is defined as ‘‘an exaggerated negativemental set brought to bear during actual or anticipated painfulexperience” (Sullivan et al., 2001). It involves magnification andrumination of pain, and feelings of helplessness (Sullivan, Bishop,& Pivik, 1995). Many studies have shown that pain catastrophizingis detrimental to various emotional and physical outcomes such asintense pain experience and heightened emotional distress (Sulli-van et al., 2001). Furthermore, catastrophizers with chronic paindisplay higher levels of disability (Martin et al., 1996), increasedpain medication usage (Jacobson & Butler, 1996), longer hospital-ization (Gil et al., 1993), longer recovery after surgery (Kendell,Saxby, Farrow, & Naisby, 2001).

Pain catastrophizing is thought to have a communal functionsuch that pain catastrophizers seek to solicit social support andempathic reactions from close others (Sullivan et al., 2001).Catastrophizers are also more likely to feel entitled to pain relatedsupport, which ironically elicits negative responses from close oth-ers (Cano, Leong, Heller, & Lutz, 2009). Whereas harmful to painmanagement, we think that pain catastrophizing allows potentialfailures (e.g., work or academic performance) to be attributed topain rather than to self (e.g., ‘‘I didn’t do well because of this awfulpain”). That is, pain catastrophizing may also have a self-protectionfunction as a self-handicapping strategy.

1.3. The present study

Based on the idea that pain catastrophizing provides a potentialway to self-handicap, we hypothesized that self-handicapperswould be more likely to catastrophize pain. Moreover, catastro-phizing, in turn, would predict higher levels of self-reported pain.In other words, it was expected that there would be an associationbetween self-handicapping and self-reported level of pain, whichwould be mediated by pain catastrophizing. We tested this modelin a cross-sectional study.

2. Method

2.1. Participants and procedure

Participants were recruited from undergraduate students in theparticipant pool of University of Houston. The study was approvedby the IRB of the university prior to recruitment. Those who wereinterested and agreed to participate completed an online surveyand received extra course credit in return. A total of 255 studentsparticipated in the study. Four participants who had extreme out-lier scores, with a cutoff point of four standard deviations, were

dropped. Normality assumptions were reasonably met. None ofthe items had more than 2% missing responses, and for those par-ticipants with missing responses, mean scores of the scales werecalculated by dropping the missing items. Thus 251 participantswere included in the analyses. Mean age was 21.85 (SD = 5.30),the sample consisted mostly of females (78%), and it was ethnicallydiverse (24.7% Asian, 18.7% African, 25.1% Caucasian, 26.7% His-panic, and 4.4% other).

2.2. Measures

2.2.1. Self-handicappingSelf-handicapping was measured by the short version of the

self-handicapping scale (Rhodewalt, 1990). The scale consists of14 items (e.g., ‘‘I would do a lot better if I tried harder”) rated ona one (disagree very much) to six (agree very much) scale. Higherscores indicate higher self-handicapping. The scale is widely used,and research has shown that it is internally consistent and hasgood predictive validity (Rhodewalt, 1990; Strube, 1986). In thisstudy internal reliability was .80.

2.2.2. Pain catastrophizingPain catastrophizing was measured by the pain catastrophizing

scale (PCS; Sullivan et al., 1995). The scale consists of 13 items thatmeasure catastrophic thinking about pain. It has three subscales,rumination (e.g., ‘‘I keep thinking about how badly I want the painto stop”), helplessness (e.g., ‘‘It’s terrible and I think it’s never goingto get any better”), and magnification (e.g., ‘‘I become afraid thatthe pain may get worse”). Participants rate the items on a one(not at all) to five (all the time) scale. The scale has been shownto be reliable and valid in various studies (Osman et al., 2000;Sullivan et al., 1995). In this study internal reliability was .96.

2.2.3. Self-reported painGeneral level of pain was measured by the short form of McGill

pain questionnaire (SF MPQ; Dworkin et al., 2009; Melzack, 1987).The revised version of SF MPQ consists of 22 items and measuresthe intensity of different kinds of pain and related symptoms(e.g., throbbing pain, hot-burning pain) over the previous week.Participants rate items on a 0 (none) to 10 (worst possible) scaleconsidering how they felt during the past week. SF MPQ is shownto be valid and reliable (Grafton, Foster, & Wright, 2005). In thisstudy internal reliability was .92.

3. Results

3.1. Preliminary analyses

Initially the data were examined for demographic differences inthe variables. Results showed that females reported slightly morepain (M = 1.72, SD = 1.48) than males (M = 1.16, SD = 1.31; t(247) = �2.48, p < .05). Furthermore age had a positive correlationwith pain (r = .17, p < .01) and a negative correlation with self-handicapping (r = �.23, p < .001). Also, nineteen participants re-ported a chronic pain condition. Ethnicity had no effect on any ofthe variables. Both age and gender were controlled in furtherregression analyses.

Table 1 provides the means and partial correlations (controllingfor age and gender) for each of the measures, including the sub-scales of pain catastrophizing. These analyses revealed that self-handicapping has a positive moderate correlation with pain catas-trophizing and all of its subscales, and a positive correlation withself-reported pain. Also, catastrophizing moderately correlatedwith level of pain as expected.

Table 1Correlations and descriptive statistics.

1 2 3 4 5 6

1. Self-handicap – .44 .19a .38 .41 .442. Catastrophizing .44 – .43 .92 .88 .953. McGill pain .23 .44 – .36 .40 .434. Rumination .38 .92 .37 – .73 .805. Magnification .40 .88 .42 .73 – .796. Helplessness .43 .95 .44 .80 .79 –

Mean 2.28 2.17 1.61 2.54 2.14 1.95SD .74 .99 1.47 1.20 1.08 .98

Zero order correlations are reported above the diagonal, partial correlations (con-trolling for age and gender) are reported below the diagonal.All correlations are significant at p < .001, except (a) p < .01.

Self-Handicapping Pain

Pain Catastrophizing

*24.*54.

(.23*)

* p < .001, R2 = .24

.05, ns.

Fig. 1. Pain catastrophizing as a mediator of self-handicapping and pain.

* p < .01, ** p < .001,

X2(1) = .002, p = .96

† p < .09

Fig. 2. Path analysis of pain catastrophizing subscales.

504 A. Uysal, Q. Lu / Personality and Individual Differences 49 (2010) 502–505

3.2. Mediation analysis

We hypothesized that self-handicapping would predict paincatastrophizing, which in turn, would predict higher levels of pain.Following the guidelines of Baron and Kenny (1986) the mediationmodel was tested using regression analyses. Initially, self-handi-capping was entered as a predictor of pain. This effect was signifi-cant (b = .23, p < .001). Next, self-handicapping was entered as apredictor of pain catastrophizing. The effect of self-handicappingon catastrophizing was also significant (b = .45, p < .001). Finallyboth self-handicapping and pain catastrophizing were entered aspredictors of pain. Pain catastrophizing significantly predicted pain(b = .42, p < .001), and the effect of self-handicapping on pain wasno more significant (b = .05, ns). Total variance explained in painwas .24 (R2 = .24, p < .001). These results suggest that the effectof self-handicapping on pain is fully mediated by pain catastro-phizing (Sobel test Z = 4.97, p < .001), providing support for ourhypotheses. The findings are summarized in Fig. 1.

3.3. Path analysis

We have also conducted a path analysis using Mplus software(Muthén & Muthén, 2001) to investigate the specific associationswith the three subscales of pain catastrophizing. The model is pre-sented in Fig. 2. Results showed that self-handicapping predicted allthree subscales of pain catastrophizing similarly, however the effectof self-handicapping on pain was mediated by helplessness. Rumina-tion and magnification did not have a significant effect on pain.

4. Discussion

This study investigated whether self-handicappers would claimhigher levels of general pain, based on the idea that exaggeratingpain could provide a way to self-handicap. It was hypothesizedthat self-handicappers would be more likely to catastrophize pain,which would then predict higher self-reported pain. The findingssupported the hypotheses, the association between self-handicap-ping and pain was fully mediated by pain catastrophizing. Morespecifically, trait self-handicapping was moderately associated

with rumination, helplessness, and magnification dimensions ofpain catastrophizing, but its effect on pain was mediated by help-lessness dimension of pain catastrophizing.

The present study makes contributions to the literature inseveral ways. First, to our knowledge this is the first study todemonstrate the associations between trait self-handicapping,pain catastrophizing, and pain. Although trait self-handicappinghas been linked to ill-being such as depression and somatic symp-toms (Zuckerman & Tsai, 2005), and claiming more pain wasshown to be a viable way to self-handicap in an experimentalstudy (Mayerson & Rhodewalt, 1988), we are not aware of anystudies that investigated the association between trait self-handi-capping and general, daily pain.

We think that self-handicappers’ tendency to catastrophize paineventually leads to feeling more actual pain. Several studies haveshown that pain catastrophizing is associated with increased levelof pain (Sullivan et al., 2001). Hence, there is reason to believe thatcatastrophizing pain in order to self-handicap would lead to feelingmore pain in the long run. Our findings suggest that self-handicap-ping is associated with pain via the helplessness dimension ofcatastrophizing. Experiencing helplessness could lead to anxietyand depression which is often comorbid with pain. On the otherhand, only exaggerating pain in order to self-handicap might notlead to increased level of pain. However, it should also be notedthat self-handicappers might be reporting more pain as a way ofself-handicapping. Unfortunately, with self-report data there isno way to distinguish whether self-handicappers are merelyreporting more pain or genuinely feeling more pain.

Second, there is a scarcity of research on the psychological originsof pain catastrophizing. The present study provides some evidencefor self-handicapping as a potential antecedent of pain catastrophiz-ing. The findings suggest that self-handicappers are more likely tocatastrophize pain, possibly as a strategy to self-handicap. Researchsuggests that people tend to self-handicap when they are unsureabout their abilities to reach success, in order to externalize potentialfailure (Arkin & Oleson, 1998). Claiming and exaggerating pain pro-vides a valid excuse for self-handicappers, and it may appear like aneasy, safe way to self-handicap.

Third, the study also introduces a defensive element to paincatastrophizing. Recent research on pain catastrophizing focusedon the idea that catastrophizing serves a communal function suchthat catastrophizers are seeking proximity and social supportfrom their social environment (Sullivan et al., 2001). This study,on the other hand, suggests that catastrophizing might also havea self-protective function (i.e., protection of self-esteem). In fact,self-handicapping accounted for 20% of the variance in pain catas-trophizing, suggesting that defensive processes might be animportant aspect of catastrophizing. By exaggerating pain, indi-viduals might be keeping an external excuse at hand for the po-tential failures in their daily lives.

The present study also has some caveats. First, it is cross-sec-tional in nature thus the causal conclusions are limited. The

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findings support the idea that self-handicapping predicts paincatastrophizing, however it does not exclude other explanations.For instance, a third variable that reflects general maladjustment(such as neuroticism) can account for these associations.

Research has shown that self-handicapping is positively relatedto neuroticism (Ross et al., 2002). Although self-handicapping wasstill substantially associated with maladjustment and ill-beingeven after controlling for neuroticism (Zuckerman & Tsai, 2005),the present study cannot discount the role of neuroticism. Simi-larly, the causal direction between the variables might be different.For instance, people who are in more pain and who feel helplessmight begin to use their exaggerated claims of pain as a self-hand-icapping strategy. Furthermore, this could even be a cyclical pro-cess. Self-handicapping can lead to pain catastrophizing with ahigh degree of helplessness, resulting in increased pain which thenleads to more self-handicapping. Future longitudinal and experi-mental studies would give us more insight about the causal direc-tions, and the unique role of self-handicapping.

Second, the sample of the present study consisted of under-graduate students. More studies are needed to replicate the find-ings with different samples. Especially, it might be important toexamine these associations with a sample of individuals whoare in chronic pain. We believe that the link between self-handi-capping and pain catastrophizing would even be higher withchronic pain patients. Self-handicappers who are diagnosed withany kind of chronic pain already have a valid excuse and theywould be more likely to catastrophize, especially before impor-tant performances. Similarly, people who are not self-handicap-pers but in chronic pain, and who experience a high degree ofhelplessness, might in time realize that their condition providesan external excuse for unsuccessful performances. Especially,when their level of disability due to chronic pain threatens theirsense of self, they might eventually begin to use their conditionas a self-handicapping strategy. For instance, a student who ishaving problems at school may realize that his/her chronic painprovides a valid excuse for a failure in an exam and begin tocatastrophize the pain during the whole semester. This way thestudent’s grades at the end of the semester would be attributedto his/her condition, not to lack of ability, protecting the self. Inbrief, we think that the findings presented in this study mighthave important implications for people who are in chronic pain,however more research is needed.

Last, all of the measures used in the study were self-report mea-sures. Replicating the results with behavioral or more objectivemeasures of the constructs would provide a stronger test of thehypotheses. For instance, some of the items of the self-handicap-ping scale (e.g., ‘‘Sometimes I get so depressed that even easy tasksbecome difficult”) are conceptually similar to the helplessnesssubscale of pain catastrophizing, which might have lead to over-lapping variance. In future, studies employing different measure-ment methods can address this limitation.

Finally, we wish to underscore that although we used the word‘‘strategy” throughout the article, it does not necessarily mean thatself-handicappers exaggerate pain deliberately, in a planned way.Some researchers have argued that self-handicapping also involvesself-deception (Arkin & Oleson, 1998; Hirt, Deppe, & Gordon, 1991;Zuckerman & Tsai, 2005). The present findings suggest that self-handicappers catastrophize pain, consciously or not. Future studiescan investigate whether self-handicappers catastrophize painmore deliberately or in a self-deceptive way. This distinction mighthave important theoretical and clinical implications.

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