fear of success

a fear of accomplishing one’s goals or succeeding in society, or a tendency to avoid doing so. Fear of success was originally thought to be experienced primarily by women, because striving for success was held to place a woman in conflict between a general need for achievement and social values that tell her not to achieve “too much.” It is now thought that men and women are equally likely to experience fear of success. Also called fear of success syndrome; Horner effect. See also Jonah complex. [first proposed in 1969 by U.S. psychologist Matina Horner (1939– )]

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Psychology term of the day

November 24th 2024

regression sum of squares

(symbol: SS_regression) a number indicating the amount of variance in a dependent variable that can be explained by the variance in one or more associated independent variables. It thus describes how well a particular model fits the observed data. For example, in linear regression it is used to calculate a coefficient of determination or a coefficient of multiple determination, and in analysis of variance it is used to determine the total sum of squares and calculate an F ratio. Compare error sum of squares.