Fear of Failure in Group Risk‐taking

High-school students were administered items from the CDQ (Choice Dilemmas Questionnaire) under success-orientated or failure-orientated instructions. A control group of college subjects was administered the usual success-orientated instructions. Subjects in the failure-orientated condition were significantly more risky in their decisions than subjects in the success-orientated condition, indicating that ‘fear of failure’ in decisions involving risk results in high-risk decisions. A risky shift was not found in any of the conditions, although subjects in both success conditions perceived themselves as more risky than their peers.