The Relationship of Fear of Failure, as Measured by the Hostile Press System, to the Confirming Interval Measure of Goal-Setting Behavior

摘要

The present study was concerned with the relationship between fear of failure motivation (as measured by Hostile Press scores on TAT stories) and the placement of boundaries of the confirming interval in an level of aspiration (LA) situation. Forty-four male and 46 female Ss completed a scrambled words task, in which 3 questions aimed at establishing the confirming interval (CI) were asked for ten sets of 20 scrambled words. The results indicated that: (1) while high hostile press (HP) males had significantly wider CIs than low HP males, high HP females had significantly lower CIs; (2) high HP males showed a significantly positive relationship between HP score and the distance of the upper CI boundary from the past performance mean. For females, this relationship was significant in the opposite direction; and (3) there were no significant relationships between HP and the distance between the lower CI boundary and the past performance mean in either males or females. (Author)