Why are we so afraid of failing?
How psychology came to measure the fear of failing, from a 1957 model to a five-part scale, and why the room matters as much as the person.
Answer to the question
Why are we so afraid of failing?
People are afraid of failing because failing is expected to cost something. Since John Atkinson's 1957 model, fear of failure has been treated as a motive to avoid failure set against the wish to achieve. A 2002 scale measures it through five expected costs: shame, a lower view of oneself, an uncertain future, and others losing interest or being upset.
Key takeaways
- John Atkinson's 1957 model set a motive to avoid failure against the motive to achieve, and his later summary links the stronger avoidance motive to a lean towards very easy or very hard tasks.
- Elliot and Church linked performance-avoidance goals to fear of failure and low expectations of competence in a college class, and found that these goals lowered intrinsic motivation and graded performance.
- Conroy, Willow and Metzler built a 25-item scale with 544 college students around five expected consequences of failing: shame and embarrassment, a lower view of oneself, an uncertain future, important others losing interest, and upsetting important others.
- Ryan Holiday's The Obstacle Is the Way offers a Stoic reading in which an obstacle becomes material for action; it is a philosophical position and not a research finding.
- In a survey of 329 students, mastery-approach goals weakened the effects of a performance-oriented environment on fear of failure and mastery-avoidance goals strengthened its negative effects (Giel and colleagues, 2020).
This article is general information about research on fear of failure and motivation. It is not medical or psychological advice. If worry about failing is affecting your daily life, speak to your GP or a qualified professional. Medical review: Reja Batool.
People who are afraid of failing, on one 25-item scale from 2002, are people who expect failing to cost them in five ways. The idea behind the scale is older. Fear of failure entered psychology in the late 1950s as a quantity in an equation, when John Atkinson modelled every pass-or-fail task as a pull towards succeeding and a second pull away from failing, with a motive of its own.
A motive to avoid failure, with a number attached
In Atkinson's account, those afraid of failing are the people in whom the motive to avoid failure outweighs the wish to achieve. The model is built from plain parts. The pull towards success depends on how much the person wants to achieve, how likely success looks and how much it would be worth, and the worth rises as the odds fall, so an unlikely win counts for more than a likely one. The pull away from failure runs on the same parts in mirror image: how strongly the person is disposed to dread failing, how likely it looks and how costly it would be.
The model appeared in Psychological Review in 1957, and Atkinson's own later summary of the theory adds the prediction that made it testable. People whose wish to achieve is strong tend to choose tasks of middling difficulty, where effort decides the result. People in whom the dread of failing is stronger lean towards the very easy or the very hard. The same summary records how the motive was first measured: by asking people about the unease they normally feel in test situations, with story-based methods following later.
The model also had a memory. Success raised the expectation of succeeding at similar tasks and failure lowered it, which moved later aspirations and how long people kept going.
Fear of failure was therefore, from the start, a disposition carried into a situation and not a verdict on any one task. That detail matters for everything that followed, because later work kept the disposition and added the situation.
From classroom goals to a five-part scale of costs
Forty years after Atkinson, Andrew Elliot and Marcy Church moved the idea into the classroom. Studying college students, they tested a model of three achievement goals: mastery, performance-approach and performance-avoidance. Performance-avoidance goals went with fear of failure and low expectations of competence. Performance-approach goals went with high expectations alongside fear of failure, and mastery goals with the wish to achieve. In their results mastery goals raised intrinsic motivation and graded performance, while performance-avoidance goals lowered both.
Goals of this kind describe what a person is trying to show, which sets them apart from the output targets covered in What is goal-setting theory. The same split between aiming at something and aiming away from something runs through Why do New Year's resolutions fail, where a Swedish trial found approach goals reported as successful more often than avoidance goals.
In 2002 David Conroy, Jason Willow and Jonathan Metzler asked a different question: what do people expect failing to cost them? Working with 544 college students, they built the Performance Failure Appraisal Inventory, which settled on 25 items across five expected consequences of failing. The five expected consequences are:
- Shame and embarrassment.
- A lower view of oneself.
- An uncertain future.
- Important others losing interest.
- Upsetting important others.
Most of the five look outward, to other people or to the future.
Ryan Holiday's The Obstacle Is the Way reached general readers in 2014 by another road. Drawing on Stoic writers, it argues that what blocks a person can become the material for action, so that a setback is a place to start and not a reason to stop. It is a philosophical position and not a measurement, and it meets the same pull from the other side: Atkinson describes why people steer away from tasks where failing looks likely, and the book recommends walking towards them.
Afraid of failing, room by room
If fear of failure is a forecast of what a result will do to standing and relationships, the room should matter as much as the person. A room that makes results public and comparable raises what a result can cost, and one that points at learning lowers it. The next study puts that to the test. Doubt about one's standing is also the thread in What is imposter syndrome, which follows how widely people report it and why the range is so wide.
The five costs in the 2002 scale also give a practical way to question any setting: who sees the result, what it says about the person, what it does to the next step, and whose interest or approval is on the line. A team, class or household that can answer those questions differently has changed the forecast, whatever the disposition of the people in it.
Lisenne Giel and colleagues put the room and the person into one analysis. In a survey of 329 students at a selective college, they measured how performance-oriented the learning environment felt and what achievement goals each student held, then related both to fear of failure. A single survey shows how things go together and not which came first. Approach and avoidance orientations were each positively related to fear of failure. Mastery-approach goals weakened the effects of a performance-oriented environment, while mastery-avoidance goals strengthened its negative effects. The same room weighed differently on students with different goals.
Common questions
Why are we so afraid of failing?
Research describes fear of failure as a motive to avoid failure that sits against the wish to achieve. A 2002 scale measures it through five expected costs: shame, a lower view of oneself, an uncertain future, and important others losing interest or being upset. A 2020 survey of 329 students found that the learning environment and a student's goals shaped it together.
Who first studied fear of failure?
John Atkinson set out a model in 1957 in which a motive to avoid failure works against the motive to achieve, and his later summary links it to a preference for very easy or very hard tasks.
Does the setting change how strong the fear is?
In the 2020 survey of 329 students, mastery-approach goals weakened the effects of a performance-oriented environment and mastery-avoidance goals strengthened its negative effects. The survey cannot show which came first.
What does The Obstacle Is the Way say about setbacks?
Ryan Holiday draws on Stoic writers to argue that an obstacle can become material for action. It is a philosophical position and not a research finding.
Sources
Holiday, R. The Obstacle Is the Way. Seed book; vault hub Books/The Obstacle Is the Way.
Atkinson, J. W. (1957). Motivational determinants of risk-taking behavior. Psychological Review, 64(6, Pt.1), 359-372. doi:10.1037/h0043445 https://doi.org/10.1037/h0043445
Atkinson, J. W. Achievement motivation (reference entry). https://www.encyclopedia.com/social-sciences/applied-and-social-sciences-magazines/achievement-motivation
Elliot, A. J., & Church, M. A. (1997). A hierarchical model of approach and avoidance achievement motivation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72(1), 218-232. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.72.1.218 https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.72.1.218
Conroy, D. E., Willow, J. P., & Metzler, J. N. (2002). Multidimensional fear of failure measurement: The Performance Failure Appraisal Inventory. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 14(2), 76-90. doi:10.1080/10413200252907752 https://doi.org/10.1080/10413200252907752
Giel, L. I. S., Noordzij, G., Noordegraaf-Eelens, L., & Denktas, S. (2020). Fear of failure: A polynomial regression analysis of the joint impact of the perceived learning environment and personal achievement goal orientation. Anxiety, Stress, & Coping, 33(2), 123-139. doi:10.1080/10615806.2019.1695603 https://doi.org/10.1080/10615806.2019.1695603