JOURNAL OF RESEARCH IN PERSONALITY 8, 172-176 (1974)

The Motive to Avoid Success: A Further Examination1

MARILYN BROWN, JIM JENNINGS, AND VICKIE VANIK

California State University, Humboldt

Horner’s (1966) “fear of success” study was replicated and ex- panded. One hundred seventy-seven high school (HS) and college students wrote stories in response to the following cues: “After first-term finals, John (Anne) finds himself (herself) at the top of his (her) medical-school class.” Results indicated similarity of response of HS men, HS women, and college men, all of whom expressed more fear of success imagery in response to the Anne cue than to the John cue. College women did not conform to this pattern.

There is a great deal of evidence that women generally fail to fulfill their intellectual potential (Terman & Oden, 1947; Rossi, 1965a,b; Phillips, Hindsman, & McGuire, 1960; Coleman, 1961). Horner (1968) suggested a possible explanation for women’s general failure to fulfill their potential. She postulated that, in addition to the motive to succeed, women also have a motive to avoid success. The result is a fear of suc- cess that inhibits achievement motivation. Horner asked men and women college students to write a story based on the following cue, “After first- term finals, John (Anne) finds himself (herself) at the top of his (her) medical-school class.” The women wrote about Anne, the men about, John. She found that 65% of the women told stories that indicated a motive to avoid success while only 8% of the men expressed it. The present study was an attempt to replicate and expand Horner’s investi- gation of this phenomenon by having subjects additionally respond to an opposite sex cue and by including a high school sample.

It was hypothesized that more negative imagery would be expressed by both sexes to the Anne cue than to the John cue. That is, both sexes deem it more appropriate for a man (John) to achieve success in a male- dominated profession than for a woman (Anne).

The present study attempted to broaden the scope of Horners’ study by including a high school sample. Following Horner’s reasoning that

1 The authors acknowledge the help and encouragement of Dr. Kathleen Preston in the preparation of this manuscript. Requests for reprints should be sent to Marilyn Brown, Route 1, Box 268, Ferndale, CA 95536.

172 Copyright @ 1974 by Academic Press, Inc. All rights of reproduction in any form reserved.

THE MOTIVE TO AVOID SUCCESS 173

subjects who exhibit the motive to avoid success tend to be those who are most able to succeed, it was hypothesized that college women would express more fear of success imagery on the Anne cue than high school women. Likewise, college men would express more on the John cue than high school men.

METHOD

Subjects. Subjects (Ss) were drawn from two sources, a local high school and a college campus. The high school (HS) sample consisted of 45 females and 34 malts attending required social studies classes. The mean age was 16.5, ranging from 15 to 18 yr. The college sample consisted of 52 males and 46 females attending a required introductory psychology class or a required introductory science class. Th(l mean age was 24.9, ranging from 18 to 39 yr.

Stimuli. There were two stimulus cues employed for each S. 1. After first-term fmals, John finds himself at the top of his medical-school class. 2. After first-term finals, Anne finds herself at the top of her medical-school class. These cues were enclosed in a four-page booklet. The first page asked S to indi-

cate his or her field of interest, sex, age, and CPA. Page two consisted of instruc- tions. A cue was at the top of each of pages three and four with the Anne-John order randomly varied to cont.rol for order effects.

Procedure. After the students had assembled for class the booklets were distrib- uted. Two experimenters (Es) distributed booklets to the college sample while a third experimenter administered them to the HS sample. Ss were urged to answer truthfully the questions on sex, age, GPA, and major, while waiting for instructions. Ss were instructed to respond to the cues by writing a story giving the following information: what the situation is, what led up to it, what the people are thinking and feeling, and what they will do.

Ss were given 5 min to respond to each cue. Scoring. Each story was scored for the presence of “fear of success” imagery.

which is defined as the fear that success in an academic or professional setting will lead to negative consequences. A simple “present-absent” scoring system was used : either a story expressed negative imagery or it did not.

Following Horner’s (1968) criteria, a story was determined to have expressed fear of success if it expressed negative consequences because of the success, antici- pation of negative consequences, negative affect because of the success, instrumental activity away from present or future success, any direct expression of conflict about the success, denial of the situation described by the cue, or bizarre responses.

There was complete agreement on 737~ of the stories when the three Es inde- pendently scored each story. Where there was disagreement, the majority score was used. An independent scorer rated 45 of the stories, which resulted in a correlation of .75 with the Fs’ ratings.

RESULTS

Table 1 descriptively summarizes the results from both samples. For the first hypothesis, as direction of outcome was predicted, a one-

tailed McNemar test for the significance of changes test was utilized (Siegel, 1956). The second hypothesis was subjected to a one-tailed chi-

174 BROWN, JENNINGS AND VANIK

TABLE 1 THE PERCENT.IGF, AND NUMBER OF COLLEGE AND HS MALES .~ND FEMALES

EXPRIGSSING NBYGATIVE IMAGERY IN RESPONSE TO THE JOHN AND ANNE CUES

Anne John

College males College females

7% No. Total CI /” No. Total

46 24 52 17 8 46 25 13 52 20 9 46

Anne John

38 18

HS males

13 6

34 34

42 18

HS females

19 8

45 45

square test for two independent samples (Siegel, 1956). The significance level was set at .05.

Hypothesis 1. In the college sample there was a significant tendency for males to express more negative imagery to the Anne cue than to the John cue (x2( 1 j = 4.84, p < .025). However, this was not true for fe- males (x2(1) = .40, p > .05).

In the high school sample, there was significantly more negative imagery expressed to the Anne cue than to the John cue by males (x2(1) = 3.77, p < .05). This was also true of HS females (x*(l) = 8.90, p < .005).

Hypothesis 6. There was no significant difference between HS and college males on the John cue (x2(1) = .29, p > .05). There was a sig- nificant difference between HS and college females on the Anne cue (x2 (1) = 5.58, p < .Ol) ; however, not in the predicted direction. That is, HS females tended to express more negative imagery to the Anne cue than college females.

DISCUSSION

The dominant pattern that emerged from this study was a similarity in the responses of HS males, HS females, and college males. All of these Ss expressed more “fear of success” imagery in response to the Anne cue than to the John cue. This pattern did not hold for college females, only 17% of whom expressed negative imagery to the Anne cue. This is in contrast to the 65% found by Horner. Also, while only 8% of Horner’s male Ss expressed fear of success, 22% of the males in this study. ex- pressed it.

Contrary to what was predicted, college students did not express

THE MOTIVE TO AVOID SUCCESS 175

more fear of success. In fact, the high school women expressed more negative imagery to the Anne cue than college women. It is possible that the. HS women did not sho.w the same resistance to social pressure as did the college women. It can be assumed that the high school sample consisted of a diverse population representing a wide range of attitudes, interests, and opinions. Due to this diversity, it is likely that this group as a whole is less acquainted with the issues of the women’s liberation movement and, therefore, has not been influenced as much as has the college group. Thus, we see more negative imagery expressed by high school women on the Anne cue.

Three common themes were found in negative stories by both men and women:

1. A general rejection of the life style attendant on being successful. 2. Acceptance of the possibility of success but with the conclusion that

rejection and alienation will be suffered. 3. Denial of the possibility of the cue. The above themes were characteristic of both males and females and

were found on both cues. However, in negative stories by males there were other themes-specifically in negative Anne stories. The following themes were drawn from stories written by males only in response to the ,4nne cue.

4. A belief that women are not suited for academic achievement and success and will ultimately be faced with failure.

5. A lack of respect for women generally, and a tendency to view women as sexual commodities.

In the course of reading and rating stories, it became apparent that three of Horner’s criteria for fear of success were questionable. One cri- terion was “bizarre, inappropriate, unrealistic responses.” In the present study, inappropriate responses seemed to reflect a reaction against the testing situation rather than a reflection of attitudes toward success. An- other criterion was “instrument’al activity away from present or future success.” The expression of this could be evidence of anticipation of failure since the failure-threatened individual will quickly quit an ac- tivity involving evaluation of performance if given the opportunity (Atkinson & Feather, 1966). The third doubtful criterion was “denial,” for which cheating was a frequent example. A failure-threatened indi- vidual will consistently avoid an achievement situation if given the opportunity. Cheating can be thought of as one alternative taken by such an individual in order to avoid evaluation. Thus, a close examination of Horner’s criteria reveals that much of the negative imagery scored for fear of success should be scored as fear of failure. In addition, Hornet (19681 found that those who had high fear of success wcrt’ more succes:$-

176 BROWN, JENNINGS AND VANIK

ful in a noncompetitive than in a competitive achievement situation. This ability to perform better in a noncompetitive situation more logi- cally characterizes fear of failure; thus, again, Horner’s fear of success seems to be mixed with fear of failure. Further research must be done to assess the relative strength of each of these motives.

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