The “cloak of competence” concept captures attempts to disguise limitations and exaggerate abilities. The author examines the conceptual converse: the “cloak of incompetence,” or the various ways people deliberately disregard, disguise, downplay, or diminish their personal abilities. Drawing on a comparative analysis of manifold empirical cases, the author identifies three generic competence-concealing techniques—avoidance, performance, and neutralization—and considers some of the interactional contingencies that can enhance or reduce their effectiveness. Avoidance and performance techniques are used to manage creditable competence. Neutralization techniques are used to manage credited competence. Each strategy obstructs the appearance and attribution of competence in a particular way: avoidance techniques prevent the dramatic realization of competence, performance techniques dramatically realize incompetence, and neutralization techniques discount, downplay, distance, or otherwise explain away evident but undesirable competent performances. The author concludes by discussing some implications for sociologies of persons, culture, and structure.

“能力斗篷”概念捕捉了掩饰局限性和夸大能力的尝试。作者研究了概念上的反面：“无能的斗篷”，或人们故意无视，伪装，低调或削弱其个人能力的各种方式。通过对各种经验案例进行比较分析，作者确定了三种通用的能力隐藏技术（规避，绩效和中和），并考虑了一些可以增强或降低其有效性的交互性突发事件。回避和绩效技术用于管理信誉能力。中和技术用于管理信誉能力。每种策略都会以特殊方式阻碍能力的出现和归属：回避技术会阻止能力的戏剧性实现，表演技术会显着地使能力丧失，中和技术会降低，淡化，疏远或以其他方式解释明显但不理想的能力表现。最后，作者讨论了对人，文化和结构社会学的一些影响。