ABSTRACT
As indicated in the previous chapter, while low effort allows a sense of selfworth to be protected in the short term, the strategies themselves have unproductive consequences. Avoidance carries its own reinforcement, enabling the individual respite, for a short while at least, from the anxiety that occurs when there is doubt about his or her capacity to cope and where failure is likely to reveal low ability. However, when a situation is encountered which causes the individual to entertain similar doubts, anxiety returns. The more avoidance becomes the preferred way of coping, the more difficult it becomes to embrace new, productive ways of responding to situations which involve evaluative threat. By these means, avoidance strategies can become entrenched and all the more difficult to alter as time passes.
