Prior studies have shown that individuals characterized as motivated by a fear of failure tend to set levels of aspiration defensively. However, it has been hypothesized that aspirational statements can be bener understood as representing a range of aspirations. The region between lower and upper boundaries is termed a confirming interval. Ss in the present study responded to a standardized measure of fear-of-failure motivation and a scrambled word measure of confirming-interval dimensions. Male Ss (n = 44) showed predicted positive correlations between width of confirming interval and fear-of-failure motivation and between fear of failure and the mean discrepancy between confirming-interval boundaries and performance scores. Females (n = 46) yielded opposite results. Results supported the value of the idea of a confirming-interval approach to level of aspiration in the study of failure-avoidance motivation.
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