CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE STUDY
The practice of self-handicapping by students in most of the Nigerian universities has increased overtime which in turn has significant effect on the academic performance of students.
According to (Berglas & Jones, 1978) defined self-handicapping as constructing impediments to performance to protect or enhance one’s perceived competence. Authors like Covington (1992) stated that in human nature, there is a need to preserve belief in one’s self-worth, so in achievement contexts, failure becomes a serious threat. That would significantly throw more light as to why instead of adopting a success orientation when confronted with schoolwork, some students focus on avoiding failure, or more specifically, avoiding the negative emotional consequences that emanate from failure.
According to (De Castella, Byrne, & Covington, 2013) stated that orientation is thwarted by fear of failure and fear that failure is a symptom of low personal competence, these failure avoiders tend to purposefully engage in some type of mechanism that enables them to ignore, avoid, or attenuate sources of anxiety and negative emotions.
It is also evident that Strategies like overworking and defensive pessimism meet that description, too, but self-handicapping strategies best reflect the clear commitment, cognitive or behavioral, to failure avoidance (Martin, Marsh, & Debus, 2001a).
Many reasons might push students to engage in their learning, but traditionally, academic achievement goal theories have distinguished between two major types (Dweck, 1986): mastery goals and achievement goals. The former are adopted by students who are avid about learning and developing competency. The second are prototypical of pupils who want to demonstrate their ability, but not so much increase it.
According to (Elliot & McGregor, 2001) stated that the current thinking is that these two motivational orientations can also be guided by avoidance tendencies to the extent that some students’ highest aspiration is to not appear incompetent to others (achievement avoidance), and others are compelled by fear of not learning, or of losing previously held competencies (mastery avoidance). With the growth in the practice of self-handicapping in most Nigerian universities, the study wishes to take Gombe State University as the case study.