An investigation on the relationship between perfectionism beliefs, self-efficacy, and test anxiety with self-handicapping behaviors

Introduction: the present study sought to determine the relationship between perfectionism (positive or negative), self-efficacy, and test anxiety with self-handicapping behaviors. method: the research method was a descriptive and correlational study. for this study, 428 students were chosen from different high schools in shiraz as the participants, using random cluster sampling. the perfectionism questionnaire (developed by terry-short), the scales of test anxiety and self-efficacy from motivational strategies questionnaire (developed by pintrich and de groot) and the self-handicapping questionnaire (developed by jones and rhodewalt) were administered to them. in order to analyze data, the correlation coefficient and multiple regression analysis were used. results: there was a positive correlation between test-anxiety, negative perfectionism and self-handicapping. however, the correlation between self- self-efficacy, positive perfectionism and self-handicapping was found to be negative but significant. regression analysis showed that 29% of the variance of self-handicap could be accounted with the four predictor variables. conclusion: the relationship between self-handicapping and such characteristics as test anxiety, self-efficacy, and perfectionism is complicated. anxious people, due to experiencing negative emotions or fear of negative evaluation, people with low self-efficacy, due to lack of self-belief and perfectionists, due to fear of failure are usually more prone to self-handicapping.