Psychological Reports, 1979, 44, 1319-1322. @ Psychological Reports 1979
HORNER REVISITED: H O W SUCCESSFUL MUST ANNE A N D J O H N BE BEFORE FEAR OF SUCCESS SETS IN?' MICHELE A. PALUDI Univer~ityof Cincinnati Summary.-This study showed that success in competitive situations is differentially perceived, considering the level of success and sex of successful person by 100 college students.
Maccoby (10) pointed out that a success-seeking woman of high ability defies the conventions of appropriate behavior for a member of her sex and, as a result, pays a price in anxiety, i.e., over loss of femininity, disapproval, social rejection. This idea is encompassed in Horner's ( 7 ) conceptualization of fear of success, a construct introduced to fill a gap in the understanding of women's achievement motivation. "Horner argued that traditional measures of achievement motivation do not reflect the conflict situation that particularly affects women, namely, that they feel it is acceptable (indeed expected) to do well at school but it is at the same time unladylike to 'beat' men at almost any task" (11, p. 140). To exhibit fear of success as operating in women and not in men, Horner gave undergraduate students the opening sentence of a story they were to finish. Women were administered the following cue: "After first term finals, Anne finds herself at the top of her medical school class." For the men the verbal lead was identical except that the cue character's name was John. Horner's female subjects projected more evidence of fear of success, i.e., negative consequences as a result of succeeding, than did her male subjects. Horner also found that women who projected fear of success onto a successful woman performed worse on intellectual tasks when in competition with men. She thus concluded that fear of success is related to achievement behavior, suggesting that it acted like a motive. Horner asserted chat a "bright woman is caught in a double bind. In testing and other achievement-oriented situations, she worries not only about failure but also about success. If she fails, she is not living up to her own standards of performance; if she succeeds, she is not living up to societal expectations about the female role" (8, p. 38). Horner's original study has stimulated much research. Fear of success in women has been related to the menstrual cycle ( l a ) , external locus of control ( 1 3 ) , masculinity/femininity of instructions and work conditions (12, 1 7 ) , sex of character depicted in the cue ( 14, 19), and, most recently, fertility ( 6 ) . lThe author wishes to express her appreciation to Dr. William N. Dember for his helpful suggestions and to Steven Gravenkemper and Randal J. Horn for their technical assistance. Requests for reprints should be sent to Michele A. Paludi.. Department of * Psychology, university of -ciocinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio 45221.
1320
M. A.
PALUDI
In addition, it has been suggested that men, too, are increasingly projecting fear of success imagery onto the successful man (3, 4, 5, 9, 15, 16). Indeed, among all the areas of research currently experiencing a feminist boom period, fear of success is in the forefront ( 2 ) . Although fear of success has been questioned with regard to theoretical and methodological problems (20), Horner has raised an important social-psychological issue. Additional research is required to refine and clarify the fear of success construct, e.g., the verbal lead or cue employed in much of the research on fear of success depicted Anne and John as being at the top of their medical school class, and by implication, ranking first. Would less negative imagery be projected onto Anne and John if they ranked in the top half of the class instead of "at the top?" Has their position in medical school and not their gender contributed to the amount of negative imagery present in the protocols? It is important to determine the extent to which men and women permit people to be successful before they are devalued. One hundred men and 100 women from introductory psychology classes were asked to tell a story about Anne or John, who ranked either at the top, in the top 5%, top 15%, top 25%, or top half of their medical school class. Ten subjects of each sex completed one form of the cue. A male and a female experimenter administered the cues so as to avoid possible effects of sex of experimenter. Coding of the protocols was carried out blindly by the author and an independent scorer using Paludi's2 extension of Hornet's ( 7 ) system?
The data are displayed graphically in Fig. 1. Analyses indicated that the association between Anne's rank in class and scores on the fear of success measure was significant (x2 = 12.33, df = 4, 9 < .05) for male subjects = 10.88, df = 4, p < .05) for female subjects. More negative and imagery was projected onto Anne by both men and women if she ranked very highly than if she did not. In fact, the majority of both men and women anticipated a good life for the "successful-but not too successful" Anne, complete with marriage and family. In contrast, subjects writing in response to the highly successful Anne depicted her as being mainly concerned, as Horner had argued, with social rejection and ostracism as a consequence of succeeding.
(x2
'M. A. Paludi, Scoring manual for fear of success imagery. (Unpublished manuscript, Union College, 1975, revised, 1978) 'The scoring manual is model after the Atkinson/McClelland manual for scoring achievement motivation. It describes in detail what is meant by fear of success by specifying which kinds of projective imagery should be taken as illustrative of fear of success and whch kind of imagery should not. Included are sample protocols written to various cues-both ambiguous and situation-specific-and an accompanying discussion as to why they were scored as they were. Proper use of the training manual should allow the novice scorer to learn to become an expert with good reliability. The training materials include: ( a ) sample stories written to a variety of cues, ( b ) detailed scoring of the protocols; ( c ) explanations of details of scoring. and ( d ) instructions for computing the reliability of the novice scorer to that of the author. The scoring criteria for fear of success imagery were derived from the literature and represent extensions of the categories developed by Horner ( 7 ) .
SUCCESS
.,I
Top
Top59. TOPIS% Top259. Top half RANK IN MEDICAL SWOOL CLASS
FIG. 1. Frequency of negative imagery ( n = 10) as a function of rank in medical school
As one woman exclaimed: "Anne would study very hard every night at the library but tell everyone she was at her boyfriend's." In addition, analyses indicated that the association between John's rank in class and fear of success scores was significant (x' = 14.96, df = 4, p < .01) for men and = 12.8, df = 4, p < .05) for women. In contrast to the results reported for the Anne stimulus, more negative imagery was projected onto John by both men and women if he ranked toward the middle of his class than if he did not. The "not too successful" John was depicted as unhappy and as a failure: "Being in the top half is not a good rank. . . . John has to work harder the next term and raise his rank. . . . It seems as though John will never catch up."
(x2
Therefore, the content of the negarive imagery in the protocols written about a man was different from that written abour a woman. Whereas fear of success may describe the negative imagery present in the protocols written about Anne at the top of her medical school class, fear of failure ( 1 ) more adequately describes the imagery present in the protocols written about John at the top half of his medical school class: discouragement, negative affect, desire to leave the situation, anticipation of future failure. Such results support Feather and Simon's ( 4 ) finding that there is a pervasive tendency to ( a ) upgrade successful males in relation to unsuccessful males and ( b ) downgrade successful females in relation to unsuccessful females. The results of the present study constitute compelling evidence that success in cornpetitive achievement situations is differentially perceived and evaluated according not only to sex of the successful person but also to the degree of success that was achieved. It would be interesting to extend the present study to include data from conditions defining varying positions, for Anne and John, in the bottom portion of the distribution of class ranks. W e might, for example, expect John's curve to remain high, but Anne's to follow a U-shaped function of degree of "non-success," perhaps never converging with John's even at the point where both are depicted at the very bottom of the class.
1322
M. A. PALUDI
REFERENCES Failure imagery in the fantasy of induced arousal. Joirrnal o f Educational Psychology, 1962, 53, 293-298. 2. DEAUX. K. T h e behavior of w o m e n and m e n . Monterey, Calif.: Brooks/Cole,
1. ANDERSON,R. C.
1976. 3. FEATHER,N. T., 4.
5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.
13. 14.
& SIMON, J. G. Fear of success and causal attribution for outcome. Journal o f Personality, 1973, 41, 525-542. FEATHER,N. T., & SIMON, J. G. Reactions to male and female success and failure in sex-linked occupations: impressions of personality, causal attributions and perceived likelihood of different consequence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1975, 31, 20-31. HOFFMAN,L. W. Fear of success in males and females: 1965 and 1972. Journal o f Consulting and Clinical Psychology. 1974, 42, 353-358. HOFFMAN,L. W. Fear of success in 1965 and 1974: a follow-up study. Journal o f Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 1977, 45, 310-321. HORNER, M. S. S e x differences i n achievement motivation and performance i n competitive and noncompetitive situations. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Univer, of Michigan) Ann Arbor. Mich.: Univer. Microfilms, 1968. HORNER,M. S. Fail: bright women. Psychology Today, 1969, 3 ( 6 ) , 36-38, 62. HORNER,M. S. Toward an understanding of achievement-related conflicts in women. Journal o f Social Issues, 1972, 28, 157-175. MACCOBY,E. E. T h e development o f sex differences. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univer. Press, 1966. MACCOBY,E. E.. & JACKLIN,C. N. T h e psychology o f sex differences. Stanford, Calif.: Standford Univer. Press, 1974. MAKOSKY.V. P. Fear of success, sex-role orientation of the task, and competitive conditions as variables affecting women's performance in achievement-oriented situations. Paper presented at the meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Cleveland, 1972. MIDGLEY,N., & ABRAMS,M. S. Fear of success and locus of control in young women. Journal o f Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 1974, 42, 737. MONAHAN,L., KUHN, D., & SHAVER,P. Intrapsychic vs cultural explanations of the fear of success motive. Journal o f Personality and Social Psychology, 1974,
29, 60-64. 15. PALUDI,M.A. Fear of success and performance of males and females in competitive 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.
and noncompetitive conditions. Unpublished senior Honor's thesis, Union College, 1976. PALUDI, M. A. Impact of androgynous and traditional sex-role orientations on reactions to male and female success in sex-linked occupations. Unpublished Master's thesis, Univer. of Cincinnati, 1978. PARKER.V. J. Fear of success, sex role orientation of the task and competition condition as variables affecting women's performance in achievement-oriented situations. Dissertation Abstracts International, 1972, 32 (9-B) , 5495. PATIY, R., & FERRELL,M. M. A preliminary note on the motive to avoid success and the menstrual cycle. Journal o f Psychology, 1974, 86, 173-177. SOLOMON,L. 2. Perception of a successful person of the same sex or the opposite sex. Joarnal of Social Psychology, 1975, 85, 133-134. ZUCKBRMAN.M.. & WHEELER.L. TO dispel fantasies about the fantasy-based measure of fear of success. Psychological Bulletin, 1975, 82, 932-946.
Accepted June 1I , 1979.
HORNER REVISITED: H O W SUCCESSFUL MUST ANNE A N D J O H N BE BEFORE FEAR OF SUCCESS SETS IN?' MICHELE A. PALUDI Univer~ityof Cincinnati Summary.-This study showed that success in competitive situations is differentially perceived, considering the level of success and sex of successful person by 100 college students.
Maccoby (10) pointed out that a success-seeking woman of high ability defies the conventions of appropriate behavior for a member of her sex and, as a result, pays a price in anxiety, i.e., over loss of femininity, disapproval, social rejection. This idea is encompassed in Horner's ( 7 ) conceptualization of fear of success, a construct introduced to fill a gap in the understanding of women's achievement motivation. "Horner argued that traditional measures of achievement motivation do not reflect the conflict situation that particularly affects women, namely, that they feel it is acceptable (indeed expected) to do well at school but it is at the same time unladylike to 'beat' men at almost any task" (11, p. 140). To exhibit fear of success as operating in women and not in men, Horner gave undergraduate students the opening sentence of a story they were to finish. Women were administered the following cue: "After first term finals, Anne finds herself at the top of her medical school class." For the men the verbal lead was identical except that the cue character's name was John. Horner's female subjects projected more evidence of fear of success, i.e., negative consequences as a result of succeeding, than did her male subjects. Horner also found that women who projected fear of success onto a successful woman performed worse on intellectual tasks when in competition with men. She thus concluded that fear of success is related to achievement behavior, suggesting that it acted like a motive. Horner asserted chat a "bright woman is caught in a double bind. In testing and other achievement-oriented situations, she worries not only about failure but also about success. If she fails, she is not living up to her own standards of performance; if she succeeds, she is not living up to societal expectations about the female role" (8, p. 38). Horner's original study has stimulated much research. Fear of success in women has been related to the menstrual cycle ( l a ) , external locus of control ( 1 3 ) , masculinity/femininity of instructions and work conditions (12, 1 7 ) , sex of character depicted in the cue ( 14, 19), and, most recently, fertility ( 6 ) . lThe author wishes to express her appreciation to Dr. William N. Dember for his helpful suggestions and to Steven Gravenkemper and Randal J. Horn for their technical assistance. Requests for reprints should be sent to Michele A. Paludi.. Department of * Psychology, university of -ciocinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio 45221.
1320
M. A.
PALUDI
In addition, it has been suggested that men, too, are increasingly projecting fear of success imagery onto the successful man (3, 4, 5, 9, 15, 16). Indeed, among all the areas of research currently experiencing a feminist boom period, fear of success is in the forefront ( 2 ) . Although fear of success has been questioned with regard to theoretical and methodological problems (20), Horner has raised an important social-psychological issue. Additional research is required to refine and clarify the fear of success construct, e.g., the verbal lead or cue employed in much of the research on fear of success depicted Anne and John as being at the top of their medical school class, and by implication, ranking first. Would less negative imagery be projected onto Anne and John if they ranked in the top half of the class instead of "at the top?" Has their position in medical school and not their gender contributed to the amount of negative imagery present in the protocols? It is important to determine the extent to which men and women permit people to be successful before they are devalued. One hundred men and 100 women from introductory psychology classes were asked to tell a story about Anne or John, who ranked either at the top, in the top 5%, top 15%, top 25%, or top half of their medical school class. Ten subjects of each sex completed one form of the cue. A male and a female experimenter administered the cues so as to avoid possible effects of sex of experimenter. Coding of the protocols was carried out blindly by the author and an independent scorer using Paludi's2 extension of Hornet's ( 7 ) system?
The data are displayed graphically in Fig. 1. Analyses indicated that the association between Anne's rank in class and scores on the fear of success measure was significant (x2 = 12.33, df = 4, 9 < .05) for male subjects = 10.88, df = 4, p < .05) for female subjects. More negative and imagery was projected onto Anne by both men and women if she ranked very highly than if she did not. In fact, the majority of both men and women anticipated a good life for the "successful-but not too successful" Anne, complete with marriage and family. In contrast, subjects writing in response to the highly successful Anne depicted her as being mainly concerned, as Horner had argued, with social rejection and ostracism as a consequence of succeeding.
(x2
'M. A. Paludi, Scoring manual for fear of success imagery. (Unpublished manuscript, Union College, 1975, revised, 1978) 'The scoring manual is model after the Atkinson/McClelland manual for scoring achievement motivation. It describes in detail what is meant by fear of success by specifying which kinds of projective imagery should be taken as illustrative of fear of success and whch kind of imagery should not. Included are sample protocols written to various cues-both ambiguous and situation-specific-and an accompanying discussion as to why they were scored as they were. Proper use of the training manual should allow the novice scorer to learn to become an expert with good reliability. The training materials include: ( a ) sample stories written to a variety of cues, ( b ) detailed scoring of the protocols; ( c ) explanations of details of scoring. and ( d ) instructions for computing the reliability of the novice scorer to that of the author. The scoring criteria for fear of success imagery were derived from the literature and represent extensions of the categories developed by Horner ( 7 ) .
SUCCESS
.,I
Top
Top59. TOPIS% Top259. Top half RANK IN MEDICAL SWOOL CLASS
FIG. 1. Frequency of negative imagery ( n = 10) as a function of rank in medical school
As one woman exclaimed: "Anne would study very hard every night at the library but tell everyone she was at her boyfriend's." In addition, analyses indicated that the association between John's rank in class and fear of success scores was significant (x' = 14.96, df = 4, p < .01) for men and = 12.8, df = 4, p < .05) for women. In contrast to the results reported for the Anne stimulus, more negative imagery was projected onto John by both men and women if he ranked toward the middle of his class than if he did not. The "not too successful" John was depicted as unhappy and as a failure: "Being in the top half is not a good rank. . . . John has to work harder the next term and raise his rank. . . . It seems as though John will never catch up."
(x2
Therefore, the content of the negarive imagery in the protocols written about a man was different from that written abour a woman. Whereas fear of success may describe the negative imagery present in the protocols written about Anne at the top of her medical school class, fear of failure ( 1 ) more adequately describes the imagery present in the protocols written about John at the top half of his medical school class: discouragement, negative affect, desire to leave the situation, anticipation of future failure. Such results support Feather and Simon's ( 4 ) finding that there is a pervasive tendency to ( a ) upgrade successful males in relation to unsuccessful males and ( b ) downgrade successful females in relation to unsuccessful females. The results of the present study constitute compelling evidence that success in cornpetitive achievement situations is differentially perceived and evaluated according not only to sex of the successful person but also to the degree of success that was achieved. It would be interesting to extend the present study to include data from conditions defining varying positions, for Anne and John, in the bottom portion of the distribution of class ranks. W e might, for example, expect John's curve to remain high, but Anne's to follow a U-shaped function of degree of "non-success," perhaps never converging with John's even at the point where both are depicted at the very bottom of the class.
1322
M. A. PALUDI
REFERENCES Failure imagery in the fantasy of induced arousal. Joirrnal o f Educational Psychology, 1962, 53, 293-298. 2. DEAUX. K. T h e behavior of w o m e n and m e n . Monterey, Calif.: Brooks/Cole,
1. ANDERSON,R. C.
1976. 3. FEATHER,N. T., 4.
5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.
13. 14.
& SIMON, J. G. Fear of success and causal attribution for outcome. Journal o f Personality, 1973, 41, 525-542. FEATHER,N. T., & SIMON, J. G. Reactions to male and female success and failure in sex-linked occupations: impressions of personality, causal attributions and perceived likelihood of different consequence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1975, 31, 20-31. HOFFMAN,L. W. Fear of success in males and females: 1965 and 1972. Journal o f Consulting and Clinical Psychology. 1974, 42, 353-358. HOFFMAN,L. W. Fear of success in 1965 and 1974: a follow-up study. Journal o f Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 1977, 45, 310-321. HORNER, M. S. S e x differences i n achievement motivation and performance i n competitive and noncompetitive situations. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Univer, of Michigan) Ann Arbor. Mich.: Univer. Microfilms, 1968. HORNER,M. S. Fail: bright women. Psychology Today, 1969, 3 ( 6 ) , 36-38, 62. HORNER,M. S. Toward an understanding of achievement-related conflicts in women. Journal o f Social Issues, 1972, 28, 157-175. MACCOBY,E. E. T h e development o f sex differences. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univer. Press, 1966. MACCOBY,E. E.. & JACKLIN,C. N. T h e psychology o f sex differences. Stanford, Calif.: Standford Univer. Press, 1974. MAKOSKY.V. P. Fear of success, sex-role orientation of the task, and competitive conditions as variables affecting women's performance in achievement-oriented situations. Paper presented at the meeting of the Midwestern Psychological Association, Cleveland, 1972. MIDGLEY,N., & ABRAMS,M. S. Fear of success and locus of control in young women. Journal o f Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 1974, 42, 737. MONAHAN,L., KUHN, D., & SHAVER,P. Intrapsychic vs cultural explanations of the fear of success motive. Journal o f Personality and Social Psychology, 1974,
29, 60-64. 15. PALUDI,M.A. Fear of success and performance of males and females in competitive 16. 17. 18. 19. 20.
and noncompetitive conditions. Unpublished senior Honor's thesis, Union College, 1976. PALUDI, M. A. Impact of androgynous and traditional sex-role orientations on reactions to male and female success in sex-linked occupations. Unpublished Master's thesis, Univer. of Cincinnati, 1978. PARKER.V. J. Fear of success, sex role orientation of the task and competition condition as variables affecting women's performance in achievement-oriented situations. Dissertation Abstracts International, 1972, 32 (9-B) , 5495. PATIY, R., & FERRELL,M. M. A preliminary note on the motive to avoid success and the menstrual cycle. Journal o f Psychology, 1974, 86, 173-177. SOLOMON,L. 2. Perception of a successful person of the same sex or the opposite sex. Joarnal of Social Psychology, 1975, 85, 133-134. ZUCKBRMAN.M.. & WHEELER.L. TO dispel fantasies about the fantasy-based measure of fear of success. Psychological Bulletin, 1975, 82, 932-946.
Accepted June 1I , 1979.
