Dependency Conflict and Underachievement

Abstract

It was hypothesized that some adolescent underachievement can be understood as the result of a conflict between dependence and a desire to appear independent. As a test of this hypothesis, 107 students in 10th grade responded to two measures of independence. The evidential measure contained questions whose answers a “luror” might interpret as evidence for independence (e.g., “Have you ever had a steady paying job?”); the claimed measure contained items on which the youngster could claim to be independent (e.g., “I can't wait to leave home”). Students' grade point averages (CPAs) were predicted from their scores on the California Achievement Test, and the difference between their predicted and actual CPAs served as a measure of under- or overachievement. The conflict hypothesis predicted that overachievement would be positively related to evidential independence and that underachievement would be positively related to claimed independence. Each of these effects was obtained. Alternative explanations of the...