Two fear of failure motives and their comparison in relation to persistence, scores on Rotter's internal-external scale, and attitudes toward a real achievement situation

Abstract

Abstract : An experiment was conducted comparing Birney, Burdick, and Teevan's Hostile Press (HP) fear of failure with Heckhausen's Furchtmisserfolg (FM) fear of failure. The basic theme of the experiment is that HP is an achievement situation avoidance motive while FM is a motive which leads one to accept or approach the achievement situation but to work within that system to avoid failure rather than to achieve success. A correlative idea of this work is that FM individuals see achievement outcomes as being their own responsibility while HP individuals see achievement outcomes as being caused by the environment. These views lead to three hypotheses: (1) That FM and HP Ss would have scores indicating internal and external orientations, respectively, toward the perception of the causes of outcomes and sources of reward as measured by Rotter's Internal-External Scale. (2) That FM and HP Ss would express these orientations as well as indicate relative approach and avoidance tendencies, respectively, in response to questionnaires concerning a real achievement situation (a test in a course in which all Ss were students). (3) That HP Ss, being avoidant of achievement situations, would not persist as long as FM Ss at a task which they thought to be hard but possible (which, in reality, was unsolvable). It was concluded that the general differences between HP and FM Ss which had been hypothesized had a good degree of validity, but that the extent of the effect of HP Ss' need for social approval had been underestimated. (Author)