Fear of Failure and Conformity Behavior in the Asch and Crutchfield Situations.

Due to past results and theoretical considerations involved in FF fear of failure, a prediction was made that a positive relationship between conformity and FF would be found in the Asch 1956 situation but not in the Crutchfield 1955 situation. The Ss were 63 male freshmen and sophomore introductory psychology students at Susquehanna University. They were paid for their required participation in this experiment. The Ss were first given a projective measure of FF the Hostile Press HP system which was developed and validated by Birney, Burdick, and Teevan 1964. High HP scores define a FF individual while low HP scores define a hope of success HS individual. The Ss were then divided into groups of high and low HP, and half of each group was randomly assigned to one of the conformity situations. Both of the hypotheses were confirmed. There were no significant differences between conformity and FF in the Crutchfield situation. In the Asch situation the differences were in the predicted direction and at the .01 level of significance. Author