The self-worth theory of motivation, which is adapted from the original theory of achievement motivation, describes an individual's tendency to protect their sense of self-worth as the motive of avoiding failure and hence approaching success. Such theory commonly applies to students in the school context where frequent evaluation of one's ability and comparison between peers exist. A majority of students believe that being academically competent is a way of maintaining self-esteem, thus try to maximise their academic competence and avoid failure. The effort an individual puts in for the maximisation of academic competence to protect self-worth is often defined as a “double-edged sword”; while it is an essential factor of success, it can also result in feelings of worthlessness and incapability if one fails. To avoid the conclusion of incapability and hence maintain self-worth, some students choose to use defensive strategies such as putting in less effort and setting low standards towards the event of evaluation. These strategies, which support the maintenance of self-worth, are called self-handicapping and defensive pessimism respectively.
Self-handicapping The strategy of self-handicapping allows an individual to justify failure by deliberately placing an obstacle on their way to success. In this way, an individual can blame the obstacle instead of one's inability when the outcome of their performance is unsatisfactory. Typical ways of self-handicapping include procrastination, reduction of effort or not willing to practice for upcoming tasks. Such performance-avoidance goals have a negative impact on an individual's attainment of performance. Thus, the strategy of self-handicapping has several negative consequences, including “low performance attainment, academic dissatisfaction, and subjective well-being,” as well as the positive consequence of protecting self-esteem. Additionally, unlike the strategy of defensive pessimism, self-handicapping is more about avoiding failure rather than approaching success. It usually occurs in circumstances where individuals put the avoidance of failure over successful performance. The self-presented dimension of self-handicapping also has been introduced. This self-reported strategy includes the exaggeration of obstacles that could impede successful performance, excuses of test anxiety and health-related problems.
Defensive pessimism In order to avoid the negative implication of failure on one's sense of self-worth, some students use the strategy of defensive pessimism; they deliberately have pessimistic thoughts about the upcoming tasks. This involves the establishment of low goals and low expectations towards the tasks for which one's ability will be evaluated. Establishing lower, thus safer, goals, which is achieved by lowering the standard of satisfactory performance, can help individuals to feel more satisfied with the outcome.
Unlike the strategy of self-handicapping, defensive pessimism does not have a negative impact on the attainment of performance or task. Instead, the interference made on this strategy can have a negative influence on one's performance. However, while it does not have a negative impact on the attainment, defensive pessimism can provoke unhealthy consequences of “decreased life satisfaction, an eventual drop in performance level, and feelings of hopelessness and worry” as well as causing fatigue and emotional variability.
Defensive expectation and reflectivity There are two important factors of defensive pessimism which are known as strategies of defensive pessimists; defensive expectation and reflectivity. Defensive expectation refers to individuals lowering their self-expectations towards the outcomes of the event where their ability will be evaluated, setting low standards towards which they will be judged. Other than reducing expectation towards one's performance in the task, individuals also tend to think about all the possible outcomes, either positive or negative, prior to an event or performance. This factor is referred to as reflectivity. The strategy of defensive expectation supports the protection of one's sense of self-worth in several ways. By setting lower thus safer expectations, individuals will have less difficult achievement standards which allows an easier approach to successful performance. In similar terms, reflectivity also assists the protection of one's self-worth by thinking through all the possible outcomes in advance. Such process of defensive reflection can serve as the motivation allowing an individual to concisely plan out and try their best in order to avoid negative outcomes and scenarios. While these two strategies of defensive pessimism can be seen in a negative light in association with individual's concerns, they rather support individual's improvement and work as a motivation to stimulate the increase of effort individuals put in the preparation process of a task or performance.
Ability, effort, and non-competitive learning structures Students try to maximise their ability in various ways for the protection of their self-worth, as ability is considered as an essential factor of achievement and success which seemingly reflects an individual's worthiness. While individuals highly value their own ability from intelligence, effort from diligence is not as highly valued as ability; it is considered equally worthy as ability only in cases where the ultimate aim is an acquisition of knowledge. For the younger students who equate the value of effort and ability, their effort gives synergy effect to their sense of self-worth by supporting the promotion of ability. However, older students commonly miss the chance of receiving synergy effect as they abstain from putting in much effort due to the “threat of humiliation” which failure can yield. To majority of the failure-avoidant students, self-worth comes from the attainment of performance and the performance depends on their ability. Since performance from one's ability leads to the sense of self-worth, in situations where students fail to show successful performance, students try to be reflected as if they are capable enough to show successful performance for the protection of one's self-esteem. The failure-avoidant students strive to look competent, utilising failure avoiding strategies such as defensive pessimism and self-handicapping, as inability is a big threat to one's sense of self-worth.
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