Is “fear of success” a kinder way of saying “fear of failure”?

A reposting of articles I (still) like from the old blog

In researching What's Stopping You? – a book to be published in 2011 aimed at overcoming fear of failure – I regularly encountered another condition, fear of success. Yet when I wrote the book I excluded it: why?

Many life-coaches and even a few psychologists claim that fear of success is as real as fear of failure. Like “imposter phenomenon” fear of success was first applied to women and especially professional women, who would become so concerned by the consequences of success that they may perhaps unconsciously employ “self sabotaging” behaviour such as partying the night before a big interview or indulging in procrastinating activities rather than revise for an exam or prepare for a key meeting. The cause of such erratic behaviour at key moments was apparently caused by their concern that they would be unable to cope with the demands of success – whether professionally or personally. While they consciously sought success and planned for it, their behaviour revealed their unconscious fears regarding its achievement.

Two psychologists in particular have researched self-sabotage and its relationship with fear of success. Dr Jason Plaks a social psychologist at the University of Toronto and Kristin Stecher, a research scientist at the University of Washington found that many people considered their professional skills and abilities fixed, which resulted in anxiety at the thought of having to develop new skills that they may consider beyond them. In fact they found that, for these people, success could lead to disorientation, which in turn could lead to a spiraling down of their performance and their ultimate failure. Those that expect and embrace success, meanwhile, view skill acquisition as a life-long learning process making them easily adaptable to the inevitable changes brought by the demands of success.

It is this projection of the negative consequences of success that drives fear of success, says its protagonists. For instance, women are especially vulnerable to concerns that success will lead to loneliness – an alienation from their former peer group that will make them unhappy. There are also concerns regarding being attacked for their success, or being pestered by untrustworthy or jealous people, or having to change their personalities in order to secure their position, or being publicly humiliated after the “inevitable” crash.

These all seem like legitimate concerns, and not just for professional women – or simply in our careers. As with “imposter phenomenon” while professional women offered perhaps the clearest demographic group because many faced obvious lifestyle changes or choices because of their success, the same can be applied to men. One obvious example, often played out by Hollywood, is the common soldier preferring the ranks to the officer’s mess due to fearing the consequences of promotion. And it goes beyond our professional lives. For instance, many people fear losing weight because they are nervous the change will have negative consequences on their family or social life, just as many continue smoking because they fear they will put on weight or lose their friends in the smoking gang.

Given all this, why didn’t I write about it in the book? These are my reasons:

1) Fear of success seems ill-defined to me. Fear of failure research goes back to 1960s experiments on children by John W. Atkinson and others. Working at Stanford University he discovered that children’s motivation towards tasks divided into those with “achievement motivation” who were oriented towards completing tasks, and those with “fear of failure” who avoided tasks due to their concerns regarding the public humiliation of failure. Others such as Carol Dweck and Norman Feather deepened this research to the point where fear of failure is a well-defined psychological phenomenon beginning in early childhood. Fear of success has nowhere near this depth of research, and I think it shows.

2) Any Google search on “fear of success” throws up a wonderful array of potential solutions. Hypnotism, acupuncture, coaching courses etc etc. The words “cure” and “fast” and “easy” come up again and again. This led me to think that the phenomenon was being led by those that like to offer a “cure”, rather than those that are keen to study “fear of success” as a potentially debilitating personality trait. As I state in my book What’s Stopping You? there is no cure for fear of failure. The fears we have now, we keep. And anyone offering a cure is, at best, exaggerating. However, as I state, strong progress is possible with self knowledge, strong goal-setting and planning, and with painstaking execution over many months and years. Anyone offering an “instant” cure to a poorly-researched condition, meanwhile, should be treated with suspicion.

3) Many of the concerns outlined above and described as “fear of success” are obviously real. Yet do they differentiate themselves enough from fear of failure? One primary concern is that sufferers consider their abilities fixed, so they will be unable to learn the new skills concerned with success, which will result, ultimately, in failure. Yet this is a classic symptom of fear of failure. There are other traits that can be equally applied to fear of failure.

4) Indeed, I couldn’t help concluding that in many respects “fear of success” sounded like a nicer way of saying “fear of failure”. While few would openly admit to fear of failure – and accept the “loser” tag that such an admission seems to bring – many would enthusiastically nod in agreement at being offered the alternative ailment of suffering from “fear of success”, which can be interpreted as being capable of success but rejecting it due to concerns that success would bring too much disruption. This sounds like an excuse to me. It also sounds like the classic High-FF (as I call people with high fear of failure) trait of avoidance – of seeking a way of avoiding a task due to the expectation of failure and the fear of the public humiliation such a failure would bring.

Yet one aspect of fear of success that should be taken very seriously is self-sabotage, although this is probably the most classic High-FF trait of all. Australian psychologist Norman Feather’s experiments on children found a bias in the willingness of subjects to persist in a task based on their levels of achievement motivation. Those with a high fear of failure – the opposite to high achievement motivation – would seek to avoid the task completely, using any available ruse (potentially including self-sabotage). Meanwhile, Bernard Weiner of the University of California developed “attribution theory” in which those with a high fear of failure attributed their successes to the fact the task was easy and their failures to the fact they lacked ability or due to some external reason such as prejudice against them. Unlike those with high achievement motivation, they did not view success or failure as within their “locus of control” based on application or effort. Given this, self-sabotage – to me – reads like the High-FF lining up his or her excuses in the expectation of what they perceive to be their inevitable failure. Blaming failure on a hangover or poor preparation or lack of sleep is, to the High-FF, mentally preferable to the alternative conclusion – that they failed because they were just not good enough.

Fear of success, therefore, may well be no more than the sophisticated avoidance mechanism of a High-FF, and – in my opinion – it should be treated as such.