Reducing effort to protect perceived ability: "They'd do it but I wouldn't."

Researchers have proposed that when students expect a failure that will indicate their incompetence, they intentionally reduce effort so that failure can be attributed to low effort, rather than low ability. Impaired performance has been found when students anticipate feedback that would indicate incompetence, but there is not clear evidence that the impairment results from a calculated reduction in effort. It was hypothesized that this self-protective mechanism makes better sense to observers than to people in a position to use it