An examination of the relationships among gender, sex-roles, and academic fear of success.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships among gender and sex-roles on academic fear of success. Participants included 80 volunteers (40 male and 40 female students) whose median age was 19 years. These volunteers are currently enrolled in undergraduate psychology courses at a midwestern university. They completed demographic information regarding gender and age, and responded to two testing instruments: the Pappo Fear of Success Questionnaire and the Bern Sex-Role Inventory. For this causal-comparative study, a 2 x 4 factorial design was used. A two-way analysis of variance was used to determine the results. Post hoc analysis used the Tukey-HSD procedure to determine if there were significant differences between the four sex-role categories. Results indicated that students who demonstrated androgynous characteristics exhibited less academic fear of success than students who demonstrated stereotyped feminine sex roles. That is, respondents who displayed a greater level of both masculine and feminine traits are thought to have greater success in an academic environment than those students who displayed a greater level of stereotyped feminine characteristics. No significant main effect for gender was noted. Furthermore, no significant interaction (Gender by Sex-Role) was demonstrated.