Fear of Failure and Perfectionism in Young Adults

“Fear of failure is a motive to avoid failure in evaluative situations based on anticipatory shame upon failure” (Atkinson, 1957). “Perfectionism is a personality disposition characterized by striving for flawlessness and setting exceedingly high standards of performance accompanied by overly critical evaluations of one’s behavior” (Hewitt & Flett, 1991). Relationship between fear of failure and perfectionism was examined. Data was collected from 200 young adults from Hyderabad using purposive and snowball sampling methods. Performance Failure Appraisal Inventory (Conroy et al., 2002) and Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (Hewitt & Flett, 2004) were used. Data was analyzed using t-test and correlation. Results show a significant positive correlation between fear of failure and perfectionism. Interventions to help reduce Fear of Failure and Perfectionism can be developed.