Sandbagging as a Self-Presentational Strategy: Claiming to be Less than You Are

Abstract

Sandbagging is a self-presentational strategy involving the false prediction or feigned demonstration of inability. Three studies explored the individual differences and situational variables influencing sandbagging behavior. Study 1 demonstrated that the newly created Sandbagging Scale possessed adequate reliability, convergent validity, and discriminant validity. The next two studies examined the social determinants of sandbagging. In Study 2, greater performance pressure led participants with higher scores on the Sandbagging Scale to predict worse performance on an upcoming task. In Study 3, participants with higher scores on the Sandbagging Scale were more likely to predict worse performance on an upcoming task to someone who was ostensibly evaluating their performance, but only when the individual did not possess prior performance information. Sandbagging is discussed as a self-presentational strategy used to reduce performance pressure and provide a low baseline against which subsequent performance can be compared.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 69 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.