There Is No Motive to Avoid Success: The Compromise Explanation for Success‐Avoiding Behavior

Abstract

There are two traditional explanations for success-avoiding behavior the motive hypothesis and the cognition hypothesis A third hypothesis, compromise, is proposed m this article and explains success avoidance as a compromise between achievement and other goals A review shows that data explained by the motive hypothesis can be explained more parsimoniously by the compromise hypothesis, that some data are weakly inconsistent with the motive hypothesis, and that there is supportive evidence for the cognition and compromise hypotheses The implications of the compromise hypothesis for motivation research m general are discussed in terms of a control theory framework Compromises may be a common feature of intentional behavior Homer's pioneenng research into fear of success (Homer, 1969a(Homer, , 1969b(Homer, , 1972(Homer, , 1974a was prompted, in part, by three earlier findings m achievement motivation research Compared with men, women show lower levels of achievement motivation, a weaker relation between achievement motivation scores and behavior, and do not show an increase in achievement imagery under conditions of achievement arousal Homer postulated a motive termed "fear of success" which was present in some women, and was responsible for the observed gender differences in achievement behaviorSince that early formulation three developments have taken place First, there are now other explanations for gender differences in achieve-I am grateful to William T Powers for his constructive suggestions about the apphcation of control theory to success avoidance, and I thank Morag Donaldson and four anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier drafts Requests for repnnts should be sent to Michael E Hyland, Department of Psychology, Plymouth Polytechnic, Plymouth PL4 8AA, England Journal cf Personality 57 3, September 1989 Copynght © 1989 by Duke Umversity Press CCC(X)22-3506/89/$150 666 Hyland ment behavior For example, Spence andHelmreich (1978, 1983) examined gender differences in achievement in relation to (a) the personality charactenstics of "instrumentality" (masculine) and "expressiveness" (feminine) and (b) achievement motives of "work," "mastery," and "competitiveness " Their conclusion was that men are higher in instrumentality and competitiveness That being the case, the three original findings distinguishing men from women m achievement behavior would follow on the basis of motivation theory (e g , Atkinson & Reitman, 1956, see also Homer, 1974b, p 237) Thus, the usefulness of the motive "fear of success" to explain some observed gender differences in achievement behavior has decreased due to the advent of newer achievement theonesThe second development is that the ongmal observed gender difference m fear of success (FOS) scores between males and females has decreased over time to the extent that it has become small or nonexistent (Tresemer, 1977) Recent data (reviewed m Hyland, Curtis, & Mason, 1985) show that measures of fear of success correlate with sex-role lnventones (specifically the masculinity...

Fear of Success and Life Satisfaction in terms of Self-efficacy

“…The second data collection tool used in the present research was the 21-item Fear of Success Scale developed by Hyland and Dann [7] and adapted to Turkish by Melli [14]. Correlations between item-total test scores of the Fear of Success Scale vary between .074 and .467.…”

“…On the other hand, cognitive approaches explain avoiding success as a learned response, which is presented by people who are successful at a socially unacceptable level and they argued that this turns into a role and habit learned from other people [6]. According to the reconciliation approach, fear of success emerges with a sense of avoiding success and stems from an effort to reach a compromise between conflicting goals [7]. There are also studies in the related literature that describe fear of success as a type of anxiety.…”

The Perils of Success in the Workplace: Comparison Target Responses to Coworkers' Upward Comparison Threat1

“…A possible explanation for the surprising findings related to Hypothesis 3 lies in Hyland's (1989) contention that socially motivated underachievement is an indication that individuals are experiencing conflicting goals (i.e., maintaining success vs. maintaining interpersonal relationships). Following this logic, our data suggest that in the presence of externally focused threats, the outperformers in our sample perceived the cost of avoiding high performance to be greater than the cost of losing coworker good will.…”

“…Fear of success was described by Tresemer (1977) as a motive to avoid high performance because of the expectation that negative consequences will result from successful achievements. Hyland (1989), however, theorized that fear of success is not itself a motive, but rather an indication that individuals are experiencing conflicting goals: maintaining success versus maintaining interpersonal relationships. Thus, in an employment context, if outperformers perceive that their successes will conflict with maintaining coworker good will, they may be motivated to avoid success (for evidence of this phenomenon, see Schnitzer, 1977).…”

Effects of Anonymity and Social Comparison of Rewards on Computer-Mediated Group Brainstorming

“…And top reward recipients may worry that their apparent superiority is threatening to those who receive lower rewards (Exline & Lobel, 1999Exline, Single, Lobel, & Geyer, 2004;Henagan & Bedeian, 2009). People at the top might seek to mitigate interpersonal strain resulting from such threats by engaging in compensatory behaviors (Hyland, 1989;White, Sanbonmatsu, Croyle, & Smittipatana, 2002), such as downplaying their accomplishments, avoiding contact with those receiving lower rewards, trying to improve the performance of others, or lowering their own performance (Henagen & Bedeian, 2009;Tal-Or, 2008;Tesser, 1988). In contrast, comparable attenuation effects among those receiving lower rewards were not expected to occur.…”