President Obama is the most prominent of a growing number of American policymakers to embrace the idea that some form of postsecondary education is crucial to students' success after high school. This year's edition of "Diplomas Count", a report by "Education Week" and the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center,…

This research focuses on the relation between color and psychological functioning, specifically, that between red and performance attainment. Red is hypothesized to impair performance on achievement tasks, because red is associated with the danger of failure in achievement contexts and evokes avoidance motivation. Four experiments demonstrate that…

The purpose of this study was to compare American and Scottish preservice principals' post-internship concerns about becoming a principal. The survey findings for this study showed that overall American preservice principals were more concerned about becoming principals than their Scottish preservice counterparts. Based on the groups' discussion…

The authors identified several specific problems with the measurement of achievement goals in the current literature and illustrated these problems, focusing primarily on A. J. Elliot and H. A. McGregor's (2001) Achievement Goal Questionnaire (AGQ). They attended to these problems by creating the AGQ-Revised and conducting a study that examined…

Investigated whether failure for men and women in competitive achievement situations is differentially evaluated according to an individual's level of failure. Found the pervasive tendency to downgrade unsuccessful men in relation to unsuccessful women. (CMG)

Examines anagram performance of 90 high, medium, and low fear-of-success (FOS) women, after the subjects had experienced conditions within the traditional triadic learned helplessness design. Concluded that increased attention should be given to personality variables within the learned helplessness paradigm. (CMG)

The fear of success construct is discussed as a possible explanation for sex differences in performance by the gifted in such areas as mathematics. The role played by the print media in perpetuating a climate conducive to fear of success is explored through a discussion of the ways in which successful females are portrayed. (Author/CL)

Purposes to extend recent efforts concerning school refusal by showing that the three basic subset, anxiety, avoidance, and malingering, are not only functional, but consistent with refusal characteristics, empirical evidence from factor analysis and clinical diagnosis over the past decade, and treatment approaches. Such extension is intended to…

Examined whether entering freshman female students arrive at college with conflicting expectations: their own, those of their parents, and those of male peers. Data from mailed questionnaires indicated such conflicting expectations exist for the women studied. They hope to achieve--but not too much. (Author)

Explored the extent to which talented Black and White adolescent women express motivation to avoid success and the effect of socioeconomic status (SES) on the expression of negative imagery. Results indicate no difference in motivation by race, however, there was a significant difference in the responses of participants as a function of the cues…

Fear of success, fear of failure, and sex role orientation were examined in engineering undergraduates. Fear of success was found to be a sex-role-related construct whereas fear of failure was found to be a gender-related construct. (Author/ABB)

One reason the fear of success (FOS) literature is confusing and contradictory is because the FOS construct is not being reliably measured across studies. Current scoring guidelines are insufficient for ensuring the reliable measurement of this construct. (RC)

This paper brings together the theory of the uncanny as it emerges in cultural theory, with an understanding of the uncanniness and troublesomeness seen to be inherent in certain understandings of teaching and learning in higher education. Drawing on research into students' experiences of learning in virtual worlds, it explores the sense in which…

Motive to avoid success (M-s) describes inner conflict that high-achieving females experience when they are confronted with academic success. Evidence of the trait was detected in a sample of female students at the associate degree and bachelor's degree levels of the medical laboratory profession when compared with male peers. (Author)