Matina Souretis Horner

1
Matina Souretis Horner
(third from right)

• 1939-

Ryan DuBois Joe Kennedy Woori Shin
2
Overview

• Biography
• Historical Antecedence
• Problems She Faced
• Research and Discoveries
• Strengths and Weaknesses
• Follow-up studies and variations
• National Recognitions and Awards

3
History Matina Horner

• 1930 Thematic Apperception Test
• 1939-1945 World War II
• July 28, 1939 Matina Horner born
• Roxbury,
  Massachusetts
• Greek Parents

4
History Matina Horner

• Boston Public schools
• Girls Latin School

5
History Matina Horner

• 1961
• B.S. Cum laude Bryn Mawr College in
  Pennsylvania
• Interested in
  Experimental Psychology
• Studied Need
  Achievement
• Married to Joseph L.
  Horner

6
History Matina Horner

• 1963 M.S. University of Michigan 1963 The
  Equal Pay Act 1963 The Feminist Movement
  1964 Civil Rights Act 1965 National
  Organization for Women

7
History Matina Horner

• 1968 Ph.D University of Michigan
• Research Assistant in Psyc Dept.
• Lecturer in Social Relations Dept.
• Conducted Research at University
• Womens motivation toward
  achievement
• 
  
• 1969 Fear of Success
• 1969 the faculty of Harvard University
• Lecturer in the Dept of Social
  Relations

8
History Matina Horner

• 1972-1989
• President at Radcliffe College
• 1972 Equal Rights
  Amendment
• 1972 Title IX of the
  Education Amendments
• 1973 Roe v. Wade
• 1978 1st time in history
• Women gt
  Men at College

9
Problems

• President at Radcliffe
• complex Harvard-Radcliffe relationship
• Admission Policy
• A Freak Accident
• Stumbling blocks into stepping stones

10
Research and Discoveries

• Background
• 1953 John Atkinson and David McClelland use TAT
  techniques to isolate need for achievement as a
  distinct psychological characteristic
• However, over the course of the next ten years,
  little research was conducted on womens
  motivation to achieve the little that was
  produced conflicted or confusing results
• Only consistent finding was that women had
  significantly higher test anxiety scores than men
• This clue, along with the lack of empirical
  evidence supporting traditional assumptions about
  womens intellectual capabilities, motivated
  Horner to investigate achievement motivation in
  women

11
Research and Discoveries

• Traditional Hypothesis Womens lack of
  achievement in comparison to men related to
  differences in aggression
• Freud Femininity equated to the repression of
  aggressiveness, which is imposed upon women by
  their constitutions and by society.
• Storr It is highly probable that the undoubted
  superiority of the male sex in intellectual and
  creative achievement is related to their greater
  endowment of aggressionThe hypothesis that
  women, if only given the opportunity and
  encouragement, would equal or surpass the
  creative achievements of men is hardly
  defensible.

12
Research and Discoveries

• Horner sought to test these assumptions.
• Horners hypothesis Many women experience a fear
  of success which inhibits their ability to
  achieve. This fear is due to the anticipation of
  negative social or cultural consequences as a
  result of achievement. Women worry about social
  rejection or being perceived as unfeminine,
  deviant, or undesirable, which subsequently
  affects their behavior with regard to pursuit of
  achievement.

13
Research and Discoveries

• 1964 Horners first experiments in womens
  motivation
• Methodology and Procedure
• Recruited 88 female and 90 male students from the
  U. of Michigan
• Administered standard TAT tests for measuring
  individual motivation to achieve, then asked
  participants to complete a fictional story about
  John or Anne, a student in medical school who
  is at the top of his/her class. Male subjects
  wrote about John, while females wrote about Anne.
• Purpose was to test for what Horner called
  negative success imagery and compare the
  frequency of occurrence in both groups

14
Research and Discoveries

• Horners categorization of negative success
  imagery
• Negative consequences because of the success
• Anticipation of negative consequences resulting
  from the success
• Negative affect because of the success
• Instrumental activity away from present of
  future success, including leaving the field for
  more traditional female work
• Any direct expression of conflict about success
• Denial of effort in attaining the success
  (including cheating
• Denial of the situation described by the cue
• Bizarre, inappropriate, or nonadaptive responses
  to the situation described by the cue

15
Research and Discoveries

• Results
• Whereas only 8 of the male subjects stories
  about John contained negative success imagery,
  65 of the female subjects described Annes
  future in negative terms
• Conclusion
• Many women did indeed harbor fears of success due
  to apprehensions about negative cultural or
  social consequences

16
Research and Discoveries

• 1968 Part II of Horners study (also conducted
  in 1964 with the same group of participants) is
  published
• Sought to test for differences in performance
  between men and women in competitive versus
  non-competitive environments
• Horners hypothesis Due to a motive to avoid
  success, women will perform better in
  non-competitive situations than in competitive
  ones, particularly if the opponent is male.

17
Research and Discoveries

• Methodology and Procedure
• Horner put all the students together in a large
  competitive group and administered a series of
  tests (both verbal and arithmetic). She then
  randomly assigned the 88 men and 90 women into
  one of three other competitive conditions
  same-sex competition, opposite-sex competition,
  or working alone, and performed the same test.
  She then compared the results of each subjects
  performance in the two different environments.

18
Research and Discoveries

• Examples of Testing Content

19
Research and Discoveries

• Examples,cont.

20
Research and Discoveries

• Results The majority of men got better scores
  in competition than when alone. For the women,
  the opposite was true fewer than 1/3 got
  significantly higher scores in competition.
  However, the women who were low in FOS performed
  better in competition (93 percent), whereas women
  high in FOS performed better alone (77 percent).

21
Research and Discoveries

• Horners Conclusion
• These findings suggest that most women will
  fully explore their intellectual potential only
  when they do not need to compete and least of
  all when they are competing with men. This was
  most true of women with a strong anxiety about
  successwe can see from this small study that
  achievement motivation in women is much more
  complex than the same drive in men.

22
Strengths and Weaknesses

• Strengths of Horners Findings
• A number of subsequent studies replicated her
  experiment and obtained the same results
• Provided an empirical base for discussion and
  research into womens achievement motivation
• Undermined sexist notions about the supposed
  inferiority of the female intellect, which were
  widespread but had a weak foundation of empirical
  evidence
• Use of each subject as his/her own control in
  condition 3 of the competitive environment
  testing ensured that variations in individual
  ability did not skew the measurement of
  achievement motivation

23
Strengths and Weaknesses

• Weaknesses of Horners Findings
• A number of subsequent studies did not support
  Horners findings
• When the first experiment was re-done with all
  subjects instructed to write about both John and
  Anne, the tendencies were the same for both
  genders (men also wrote negatively about Anne,
  while women also wrote positively about John),
  leading some psychologists to argue that the
  subjects were merely reflecting the cultural
  stereotypes of their time
• Study of competitive environments did not take
  into account complex social dynamics (i.e. sexual
  attraction and its effect on behavior) when
  looking at mixed-gender competition
• David Tresmer argued that Horner did not use the
  most appropriate methods of statistical analysis,
  and that the findings were not statistically
  significant when evaluated properly

24
Horners Influence

• Follow up Studies Variations
• Olsen Willemsen (1978)
• Variation Ann or John achieving success in a
  class of all males vs. class with half males and
  half females
• Looked for negative consequences regarding
  protagonists own feelings, other peoples
  views/opinions, and other outcomes both positive
  and negative (grades go down, elected class
  president, is mugged, wins boy or girl of their
  dreams, etc.)
• Found no evidence of fear of success as a
  personality trait
• Negative outcomes exist in the environment
• Need for analysis of cultural institutions
  instead of more John and Ann cues

25
Horners Influence (continued)

• Feather and Simon (1973)
• Anagram test followed by Horners cues for
  success stories
• Subjects that wrote fear of success stories that
  passed the test rated external factors such as
  luck or test difficulty as less important causes
  of success
• Subjects that wrote fear of success stories that
  failed anagram test rated those same external
  factors as more important causes of failure.
• Results indicated that women wrote more fear of
  success stories than men, but Horners
  percentages were significantly different. (Women
  65 vs. 35 Men 9 vs. 25 )

26
Horners Influence (continued)

• Cherry and Deaux (1978)
• Variation Success in a non-traditional field
• Anns story was the same, but Johns read After
  first term finals, John finds himself at the top
  of his nursing school class
• Significantly more fear of success stories were
  written to the John cue than to the Ann cue
• Fear of success is not a predominantly female
  concern. Women and men both anticipate negative
  consequences for individuals who violate sex-role
  norms.

27
Taking it to the StreetsHorners work after
studies

• 1969 Joined Harvard faculty
• 1972 Became president of Radcliffe
• Leveling the playing field
• Harvard lowered percentage of men in student body
  from 80 to 70
• 1975 Declaration that Harvard and Radcliffe
  would no longer have limits on how many women
  could be admitted

28
National Recognition

• 1979 Appointed by President Carter to the
  Presidents Commission for the National Agenda
  for the 80s
• Served as chairperson for the Task Force on the
  Quality of American Life in the following year

29
Post Radcliffe

• June 1989 Horner resigned as president of
  Radcliffe (17 years as president)
• Positions held since retirement
• Named to Board of Directors for both Neiman
  Marcus and the Boston Edison Company
• Executive V.P. of TIAA-CREF in New York
• Board of Trustees for Massachusetts General
  Hospital Institute of Health Professions (Became
  Chair in 1995)

30
Post Radcliffe

• Awards received
• 1990 Received Distinguished Bostonian Award by
  the Boston Chamber of Commerce
• 1990 Received Ellis Island Medal of Honor
  (Outstanding qualities in personal and
  professional life, yet maintaining the richness
  of the recipients cultural heritage)

31
Summary

• Matina Horner was a pioneer in studying womens
  motivation for success.
• Did research that sparked countless follow-up
  studies into motivation for success of both men
  and women.
• Made huge strides for womens equality at Harvard
  and Radcliffe.
• Excelled in both halves of her professional life.

32
References

• Infoplease.com. (n.d). Women's Rights Movement in
  the U.S. Retrieved June 21, 2008, from
  http//www.infoplease.com/spot/womenstimeline1.htm
  l
• Bookrags.com. (n.d). Matina Souretis Horner
  Biography. Retrieved June 17th, 2008, from
  http//www.bookrags.com/biography/matina-souretis-
  horner/
• McCain, Nina. (1989, March 6). Matina Horner
  Moves on Now, Which Way Will Radcliffe Move?
  Women Found a Place at Harvard under Her. The
  Boston Globe. Retrieved from http//www.highbeam.c
  om/doc/1P2-8110926.html
• Infoplease.com. (n.d). U.S. History Timeline
  1900-1949. Retrieved June 21, 2008,
  http//www.infolease.com/ipa/A0903596/html
• Infoplease.com. (n.d). U.S. History Timeline
  1950-1999. Retrieved June 21, 2008,
  http//www.infolease.com/ipa/A0903597/html