Academic Self-handicapping Based on Metacognitive Beliefs and Perfectionism Regarding the Mediating Role of Goal Orientation

The learners' interactions in the educational environment are usually identified as an important factor and fundamental resource in expressing emotional experiences, including self–handicapping. Academic self–handicapping is a less–known strategy used to justify failure. Some factors like metacognitive beliefs and perfectionism are related to this factor. Metacognition is a multi–aspect concept that refers to psychological structures, event knowledge, and procedures involved in the control and explanation. Perfectionism refers to self–destructive thoughts and behaviors that aim to direct goals toward becoming extreme and unreal. The concept of goal orientation indicates a coherent pattern of the person's beliefs, attributions, and emotions that leads people to have different tendencies to the situations. The present research was conducted to determine the role of metacognitive beliefs and perfectionism in predicting academic self–handicapping by mediating goal orientation in senior high school students in Urmia City, Iran.

This correlational study has a descriptive–analytical design using structural equation modeling. The statistical population included all the senior high school students in Urmia, totaling 30984. Of them, 827 students were selected by randomized cluster sampling method. The sample was selected from 69 male schools and 77 female schools. The data collection tools included Self–handicapping Scale (Midgley et al., 1996), Goal Orientation Questionnaire (Midgley et al., 1998), Metacognitive Beliefs Questionnaire (MCQ–30) (Wells & Cartwright–Hatton, 2004), and Perfectionism Questionnaire (Hewitt & Flett, 1991). The present study used the mean and standard deviation to summarize and describe the data. The structural equation modeling method, specifically the bootstrap method, was used to investigate goal orientation's mediating role. Data analysis was done in SPSS version 26 and AMOS version 24 software at a significant level of 0.05.

The results showed that without the intervention of the mediating variable of goal orientation, the direct path coefficients between metacognitive beliefs (p=0.023, β=0.49) and perfectionism (p=0.006, β=0.58) were significant with academic self–handicapping. The results showed that goal orientation had a mediating effect on the relationship between metacognitive beliefs and students' academic self–handicapping (p=0.005, β=0.248). Also, goal orientation had a mediating effect on the relationship between perfectionism and students' academic self–handicapping (p=0.009, β=–0.488). The goodness of fit indices indicated the appropriate fit of the research model (GFI=0.929, CFI=0.939, NFI=0.914, RMSEA=0.051).

According to the findings, the intervention of the mediating variable of goal orientation, metacognitive beliefs, and perfectionism has significant effects on the academic self–handicapping of students.