The Causes Of The Fear Of Failure And Self-worth Protection Strategy, And Academic Achievement

Fear of failure(FF) is a kind of negative emotion that people experience when they expect they can't reach a certain achievement goal in activities and then has been increasingly drawn more attention in recent years. Researcher have developed specialized measure tools for fear of failure and probed the causes of the fear of failure and its impact on achievement behaviors.Researchers abroad who studied causes of fear of failure paid more attention to parental rearing patterns but less to individual's temperature.Researches referred to fear of failure's effect on cognition and behavior mainly focused on sports field but there were few studies on educational field.Hence,this research attempts to study temperature's effect on fear of failure and how fear of failure impacts academic performance of middle school students.Besides,the study was to explore a specialized fear of failure measure tool for Chinese based on Conroy' Performance Failure Appraisal Inventory (PFAI).The study contains two sub-studies.In study 1,a composite questionnaire composed of PFAI,Achievement Motive Scale,2×2 Achievement Goal Questionnaire and Spielberger's Test Anxiety Scale was administrated for 586 middle school students and postgraduates to explore a specialized fear of failure measure tool for Chinese.General scale's Cronbach a is.861,five sub-scales' Cronbach a are among.682～.801;The scale has relatively good structural validity:NFI=.974,NNFI=.982,CFI=.901,GFI=.901,RMSEA=.059 and relatively good external validity:PFAI scores have significant positive correlation with the Achievement Motive Scale's avoidant failure scores,test anxiety sores of Spielberger's test anxiety scale and two avoidant motives score of 2×2 Achievement Goal Questionnaire.Totally speaking,Performance Failure Appraisal Inventory Chinese Version has very good reliability and validity and can be used to measure fear of failure.In study 2,a composite questionnaire composed of PFAI,Parental Rearing Patterns Scale(EMBU),BIS and BAS Scale,Defensive expectations and Reflectivity Scale and Self-handicapping Scale was administrated for 484 middle school students to discuss the diverse causes of fear of failure and the relationships among fear of failure,self-protection strategies and student's academic performance.The results are as follows:(1) father's emotional-warmth has negative effect on fear of failure while mother's punishment and rejection,father's overprotection and BIS temperature have positive effect on fear of failure;(2) fear of failure has significant effect on mathematics and physics performance but no significant effect on Chinese,English and chemistry performance;(3) fear of failure has no direct effect on student's academic performance but has indirect effect on that through defensive pessimism and self-handicapping.In conclusion,the Failure Appraisal Inventory Chinese Version has very good reliability and validity;fear of failure is affected by both parental rearing patterns and individual's temperature;fear of failure has indirect effect on academic performance though self-protection strategies.