Fear of Success—Fact or Artifact?

Summary

Each of 240 high school juniors and seniors wrote stories in response to one of four variations of the story cues used by Matina Horner to measure what has been called “fear of success.” These cues described either Ann or John achieving success in medical school in a situation in which either all of the protagonist's classmates were men or there were equal numbers of men and women. Six different consequences of the success were assessed. Results indicated that male and female students perceived the depicted success in similar ways and that when the “deviance” aspect of Ann being alone in a class of men was removed, negative outcomes of success were lessened. The common interpretation of these stories as the writers' projections of their own personalities is challenged.