Abhay: Preventing Self-handicapping
As a tutor for math and psychology, I tutored undergraduates in groups of one to five, meeting with the same groups twice a week. During the sessions, I led group discussions and assigned questions for the students to solve.
I always found it tricky to get my tutees to become confident in their own potential. They were self-handicapping to avoid low self-esteem. If they performed poorly, it would diminish their self-esteem. To avoid this, they sometimes would not study hard to begin with, so that they could rationalize their poor performance as the result of simply not caring. The last straw to establish this vicious cycle is the fact that students are often afraid of trying, because if they tried and failed, it might mean that they are inherently not good enough. At least if they perform poorly after not having put any effort, it does not say anything about their capabilities. I often used an incremental approach to arrive at hard problems, starting with very easy questions and tasks, and building up to tough ones. This way, their self-aspect of “Me in School” would have some positive memories and impressions from solving easier problems. I think it helped them to try harder in their classes.
Another strategy I used is inspired by research on self-affirmation. I would try to activate positive and encouraging ideas about other aspects of their self-concept. For example, one of my tutees was a great athlete, and I used to chat with him about the latest games he played. This made salient traits like dedication and focus, and I think he made the connection that these are the same traits needed to perform well in his studies.