Sex Differences in Motive to Avoid Success on Competitive or Cooperative Action

To find out the factorial dimensions among achievement-related motives (motive to approach success, motive to avoid failure, and motive to avoid success) and to provide information about the relation of the motive to avoid success to cooperative action 62 male and 62 female subjects were administered ARM Scale. Four factors were extracted by the principal-factor analysis from the correlation matrix, and the factors were rotated by a normalized varimax criterion. Two of these factors contained the motive to avoid success. Four factor scores were computed for each subject using the varimax factor weights obtained in the factor analysis. Sex differences in each factor score were not significant. The number of cooperative actions on Prisoner's Dilemma Game was defined as a score of cooperative tendency. Sex differences in the mean cooperative score were not significant. It is interesting to note, however, that the relationships between the denying attitude for attaining success and the cooperative tendency were significant for females but not for males.