Internal and external aspects of self-handicapping reflect the distinction between motivations and behaviours: Evidence from the Self-handicapping Scale

•EFA and CFA show the Self-handicapping Scale has two factors.•The two factors reflect behavioural and motivational aspects of self-handicapping.•The factors show substantively and significantly different pattern of correlations.•Together the factors showed greater prediction of grades than SHS total score.

Self-handicapping is an extensively studied phenomenon that has important educational consequences. Much of its empirical study uses the Self-handicapping Scale (SHS) to assess self-handicapping as a single construct. The current study (N = 484 university students) tests whether a multifactorial solution to the SHS is more appropriate and meaningful. Parallel analysis and exploratory factor analysis of 242 responses to the SHS suggested two factors. Confirmatory factor analysis of this solution showed satisfactory fit in a second sample (N = 242; CFI = .909, RMSEA = .062). The factors were labelled ‘Self-handicapping Internal’ and ‘Self-handicapping External’. These two factors reflect a distinction between cognitive/affective and behavioural components of the self-handicapping phenomenon. The factors showed a significantly different pattern of correlations with procrastination, self-esteem, conscientiousness and emotional stability. Collectively the two factors showed greater incremental prediction of academic achievement than a single SHS total score alone. Moreover, this prediction of achievement held after accounting for personality, providing some degree of evidence that self-handicapping is distinct from major personality domains. Results are discussed in terms of the additional substantive information gleaned from separating self-handicapping measures into multiple components.