Welcome to my perfumed garden

From "Social Psychology: Unraveling the Mystery" (Third Edition), by Douglas T. Kenrick, Steven L. Neuberg, and Robert B. Cialdini:

"People who have high self-esteem want to enhance their already favorable images, whereas people who have low self-esteem want to protect their less favorable images from failure (Tice, 1991). How do college students--perhaps people you know--self-handicap when confronted with difficult tasks? Let us begin to count the ways: by taking cognition impairing drugs before or during the task (e.g, Kolditz & Arkin, 1982); by not practicing when given the opportunity (e.g., Deppe & Harackiewicz, 1996); by consuming alcohol (Higgins 7 Harris, 1988); by listening to loud, distracting music during the task (e.g., Shepperd & Arkin, 1989); by choosing unattainable goals (Greenberg, 1985); by giving a competitor a performance advantage (Shepperd & Arkin, 1991). our choices of self-handicaps are wide and varied, indeed, and we suspect that you've seen at least several of these things in action."