Fear of Success

1969

Matina Horner (b. 1939)

The construct of “fear of success” in women was formulated by psychologist Matina Horner in her doctoral dissertation at the University of Michigan in 1969. Noting that society was increasingly achieving equity in preparing men and women for careers, Horner became interested in the conflict between traditional beliefs about femininity and the competitiveness, independence, leadership, and intellectual achievement that women were called upon to demonstrate as they made their way in the paid workforce. In her original study, she presented a verbal lead to a group of undergraduate men and women. To the men, she presented: “After first term finals, John finds himself at the top of his medical school class.” The women received the same lead with the name Ann substituted for John. The respondents were then asked to write a story about Ann or John, and the stories were coded for the presence or absence of the motive to avoid success. Horner reported that 90 percent of the men responded positively to the male success cue, while 65 percent of the women responded with stories that anticipated social rejection, loss of femininity, or personal distress. In further studies she examined the behavioral consequences of the fear of success and concluded that when faced with a conflict between their feminine image and expressing their competencies, many women changed their behavior to bring it in line with internalized sex-role stereotypes.

“Fear of success” was controversial among feminists because it appeared to individualize the problem of sex-role conflicts. It was also controversial among researchers because Horner’s findings were difficult to replicate and were never published in a peer-reviewed journal. The popular press took up the idea of fear of success enthusiastically, however, especially when Horner became the sixth president of Radcliffe College at Harvard University and the youngest woman ever to achieve that post—at the age of thirty-two.

SEE ALSO Sex Roles (1944), The Feminine Mystique (1963)

A shopping window in St. Gallen, Switzerland, displays a photograph of a mid-twentieth-century housewife in complete awe of the store’s wide collection of vacuum cleaners and other domestic appliances.