Virginia E. O'Leary

Sex-role orientation and achievement context as determinants of the motive to avoid success

Seventy-two female high school students with cumulative GPAs of 3.0 or above were administered the Wellesley Role Orientation Scale and four verbal cues used to measure success-avoidant imagery in response to feminine competitive achievement in a variety of contexts. Results indicated that the arousal of success-avoidant imagery was partially a function of the role orientation (traditional vs. nontraditional) of the students and the context within which the success was presented. As hypothesized, nontraditionally oriented students generated fewer success-avoidant responses across cues than either moderate or traditionally oriented students. However, differences in the proportion of imagery across cues was carried by the differential responses of the nontraditional students, suggesting that the inhibition of achievement behavior among women may be differentially moderated as a function of the salience of the achievement context and their definitions of sex-role-appropriate success.

Understanding female careerism

Horners fear of success construct rests on the assumption that women react negatively to achievements which violate their definition of appropriate gender-role behavior. Consistent with this assumption, the present investigation attempted to determine whether fear of success imagery expressed in response to different achievement-related cues would covary with (a) a womans own gender-role orientation and/or (b) the perceived gender-role norms of her significant male. One hundred female honors students completed the Maferr Inventory of Feminine Values and responded to projective cues depicting competitive success characterized as (a) traditionally male, (b) traditionally female, (3) social—domestic, and (d) vicarious. Only one relationship reached significance. Women who perceived the significant male in their life as endorsing nontraditional gender-role behavior were more likely to respond negatively to vicarious success. Fear of success bore no relationship to the gender role of the subject herself. In view of these findings it is considered unwise to regard fear of success as the single, most powerful determinant of a womans role choices. A more generalized cognitive model which incorporates additional intrapsychic as well as situational factors is proposed.