ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an account of the development of self-worth protection. This account relies on a conceptualisation of self-worth protection as a form of self-handicapping behaviour and traces the development of self-worth protection to noncontingent evaluative feedback. Key aspects of personality — low self-concepts of ability, uncertain selfimages, and rejection of success — along with the situational variables discussed in Chapter 7, noncontingent evaluative feedback and evaluative threat, fulfil conditions required for the development and maintenance of self-worth protection.
