Fear of Success among Business Students

Abstract

The concept of "Fear of Success" was measured with 352 male and female business students using the prompt, After first term finals, Ann(John) finds her(him)self at the top of her(his) Medical/Nursing school class. Analysis indicated a greater frequency of fear-of-success imagery among men than women and in particular to the John in Medical school and Ann in Nursing school cues. In addition, the Ann cue and the Medical school cue generated more fear-of-success responses among men than women.

Proceedings of the 2002 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Annual Conference

“…Likewise, support for the hypothesis that women score higher on FOS has diminished. This lack of support is evidenced in numerous studies conducted over the last twenty years (e.g., Zuckerman et al 1980;Brenner and Tomkiewicz 1982;Popp and Muhs 1982;Rothman 1986;Yamauchi 1986;Lew et al 1998). Still, some recent research supports the claim of higher FOS in women.…”

Comparing fear of success and fear of appearing incompetent among African Americans’ and Whites’ business candidates

“…They found no such re la tion ship exist ing for men but for women there was a sig nif i cant neg a tive re la tion ship be tween their at ti tudes to ward women and both Fear of Suc cess and Fear of Ap pear ing In com pe tent. Rothman (1996), us ing a pro jec tive tech nique to (mostly) busi ness un der grad u ates, re ported that women had sig nif i cantly lower scores on Fear of Suc cess than did men. Tomkiewicz and Bass (1999) du pli cated the ear lier study of Brenner and Tomkiewicz (1983) to eval u ate changes that may have oc curred over time be tween male and fe male business ma jors and the Fear of Suc cess and Fear of Ap pear ing In com pe tent and their re la tion ship to at ti tudes held about women.…”