Nosenko D. Personality precursors of self-handicapping as а form of proactive coping behavior.

The dissertation presents an approach to the conceptualization of a comparatively new but deeply rooted psychological phenomenon of self- handicapping which until recently has been mostly interpreted in foreign psychology as a "paradox, that isn't" and has been introduced into the Ukrainian psychology via our translation of the Self-handicapping Scale ,designed by Jones and Rhodewalt. It has been theoretically substantiated and empirically examined, -with reference to a nearly century-long history of conceptualization of the phenomenon by Alfred Adler in terms of the "masculine protest" of a physically-disabled individual against one's inferiority, - that self- handicapping can be categorized as a proactive emotionally-charged coping strategy which proved to be functionally equivalent to the emotion-focused and avoidance strategies of the reactive coping. The empirical study, carried out on a representative sample on a 120 undergraduate students of Oles Honchar Dnipropetrovsk National university, has shown that self-handicapping "fills in an empty space" in the proactive strategies matrix and functionally corresponds to a proactive emotionally-charged disengagement strategy, resulting in avoidance of the problem-solution, even though temporarily. It has been found out that self-handicapping correlates positively with the emotion-focused strategy of the reactive coping and negatively - with the proactive engagement coping strategy. These findings supported the first hypothesis of the research which stated a new approach to the conceptualization of self- handicapping, previously categorized by the American psychologists S. Berglas and E. Jones as a motivational strategy, aimed at protecting an individual's sensitive ego (self-esteem).