Achievement 187must perceive achievement as possible, if
not likely; second, the person must associ-
ate achievement with negative consequences.
A fear of success is not the same as a desire
to fail. The person who fears achievement
does not seek out failure; instead the per-
son avoids situations that might lead to high
achievement and expends less effort so high
achievement is not realized.
What was Horner’s (1972) evidence for a
fear of achievement among women? She used a
projective storytelling method. She gave college
students the first sentence of a story and asked
them to complete it. For example, female stu-
dents were told “Anne is at the top of her class
in medical school,” whereas male students were
told “John is at the top of his class in medical
school.” Students were then asked to complete
the story. Horner reasoned that anyone who
wrote a story that showed conflict about the
success, denied credit for the success, or as-
sociated negative consequences with the suc-
cess showed a fear of success. The majority of
men (90%) wrote positive stories in response
to this cue. A substantial portion of women
(65%) wrote troubled stories that showed some
conflict or negative consequences associated
with Anne’s achievement. For example, some
women wrote stories about Anne purposely
not performing well the next semester or drop-
ping out of medical school. Other women
wrote stories about Anne being alienated by
friends and family and being very unhappy.
Horner (1972) conducted this first study
in 1964 and replicated the findings over the next
six years with other samples of college students
and with high school and junior high school
students. Interestingly, she noted a trend over
time for the fear of success to increase among
men. Men began to write stories that associated
male achievement with selfishness and egoism.
Conceptually, the fear of success is the same in
men and women: the association of negativeis possible. People who realize they have no
way of reaching a goal will not be concerned
with the negative consequences of reaching
the goal. Thus someone may believe getting
an A on an exam will alienate friends but also
realize that there is little chance of receiving
an A on the exam; this person will not worry
about the negative consequences of success.
By contrast, the person capable of getting an
A and who believes this achievement will lead
to rejection by peers is likely to have a fear of
success. The person could respond to this fear
by either decreasing the amount of effort put
into the task (i.e., studying less) or hiding the
achievement from peers.
To summarize, there are two require-
ments for a fear of success: First, the personFIGURE 6.2 The historical “fear of suc-
cess” literature showed that women associ-
ated negative social consequences with high
achievements, such as graduating at the top
of one’s class.M06_HELG0185_04_SE_C06.indd 187 6/21/11 8:10 AM