Abstract
Some have questioned whether fear of success can be differentiated from fear of failure. The present study was designed to examine this issue. Women were presented hypothetical situations of success and failure in three different settings (school, sports, and work). They were asked to provide estimates of the percent of bystanders who would react positively to them and the percent who would react negatively to them under success and under failure. They also filled out a fear-of-success scale. Scores on the scale were correlated with each of the four percentages. Fear of success scores predicted the negative reaction to failure but not to success. It was speculated that scales designed to measure fear of success may actually measure fear of social rejection.
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