Anxiety and self-handicapping behavior: a correlational analysis amongst college students

Abstract

College students face an immense number of daily struggles, from managing their responsibilities to coping with changes that accompany entering the early stages of adulthood. These circumstances can often lead to feelings of anxiety which may lead to behavioral changes. However, in Lebanon these feelings are catalyzed and sometimes initiated by an increasingly stressful economic crisis, a multitude of security issues overlapping political dysfunction, all encompassed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The purpose of this study was to investigate the state levels of anxiety amongst college students in Lebanon, explore the types of self-handicapping behaviors they use, study the link between anxiety and self-handicapping behaviors, and examine the role gender plays with respect to anxiety and self-handicapping. The instrument used to collect data was a survey that aimed to investigate the following: anxiety levels amongst college students as well as the self-handicapping behaviors mostly used. This survey combined the items from the two following scales: Beck Anxiety Inventory and the Self-Handicapping Scale. The sample consisted of 510 males and females who reside and are registered in a college campus in Lebanon. The results were consistent with previous research and yielded a positive and statistically significant correlation between anxiety levels and self-handicapping behaviors. The results also revealed gender differences, with females showing higher levels of anxiety and engaging in patterns of self-handicapping behaviors to a higher degree. Further studies are needed to investigate the relation between self-handicapping and psychological distress on a larger scale.