A comparison of three measures of the motive to avoid failure:

Individual's motive to avoid failure has typically been assessed by one of three different measures, the Hostile Press scoring system, the Test Anxiety Questionnaire, and Resultant Achievement Motivation. The present research tested the ability of these three measures to predict the two major behavioral criteria of the motive to avoid failure: defensiveness on level of aspiration tasks, and choice of extreme (high or low) probability of success tasks rather than intermediate level of difficulty tasks. Subjects completed the Thematic Apperception Test, which was scored for need for Achievement and the Hostile Press measure of fear of failure. Subjects also completed the Test Anxiety Questionnaire, the Achievement Test Preference Questionnaire, and an anagram level of aspiration task. The results demonstrated that only the Hostile Press measure was significantly related to the two behavioral criteria, and led the authors to conclude that the Hostile Press measure should be used in future assessment of the fear-of-failure motive.