The objectives of the study were: (1) To locate the personality characteristics, work attitudes, psychosomatic symptoms and coping styles that are associated with fantasy based measure of motive to avoid success in females. (2) To locate the personality characteristics, work attitudes, psychosomatic symptoms and coping styles that are associated with fantasy based measure of motive to avoid success in males. (3) To compare the personality characteristics, work attitudes, psychosomatic symptoms and coping styles of males and females. (4) To locate the structural relationship of personality characteristics, work attitudes, psychosomatic symptoms with projective measure of motive to avoid success in males. (5) To locate the structural relationship of personality characteristics, work attitudes, psychosomatic symptoms with projective measure of motive to avoid success in females. (6) To locate the similarities and differences in structure of the second order factors of males and females. (7) Further it is hoped that the study will throw some light on the nature of the measuring instruments used in the present investigation. 

The subjects were 460 (230 males and 230 females) college students ranging in age from 18 to 23 years with a mean and standard deviations of 20.60 and 1.28 respectively of colleges of Amritsar city.

The following tests were administered in group of 15 to 25 subjects: Projective measure of Motive to avoid success; California psychological Inventory; Survey of Work Values; Work Component Study Questionnaire; Coping operations preference Enquiry; and Psychosomatic Symptom Scale.

The study was descriptive in nature.

Data was analyzed with the help of Mean, Standard deviation, Skewness, Kurtosis, Correlation analysis, Factor Analysis and Cross-sex factor comparison.

The main findings were: (1) Regarding sex differences, it was found that apart from motive to avoid success females differ significantly from their male counterparts on femininity, sociability, upward striving, punctuality, competitiveness, worry, irrational fear, worthlessness, nausea, disturbed sleep and tension. (2) Males on their part scored higher than females on self-acceptance, capacity for status, psychological mindedness, intellectual efficiency and projection. All these differences are quantitative. (3) The correlation analysis revealed that the correlates of projective measure of motive to avoid success in females and males are with entirely different set of variables. The females scoring high on motive to avoid success tend to be more feminine, conventional and dominated by feelings of guilt and self blame, somewhat less interested in positions of higher status and responsibility, less interested in job, more tolerant, more worried and place responsibility on her self rather than others. (4) The males scoring higher on motive to avoid success (MAS) tend to be self reliant, persistent, aspire to seek positions of higher status and responsibility, are not interested in earning money from doing jobs, competitive, more worried, more tolerant, not able to concentrate and dominated by a feeling of worthlessness. The defense mechanisms used by a male scoring higher on MAS are denial (poses to be free from stress), regression (to seek help from others) and turning against self (to criticize and blame himself). (5) The inter correlation matrices of male and female groups were factor analyzed. Even factors were obtained respectively for males and females. The resultant factor matrices were submitted to Varimax Rotation. The similarity between the factors of males and females was measured by coefficient of congruence. When congruence coefficients were calculated between the male and female factors, five mutual factors emerged: (i) self depreciation and insecurity; (ii) Ascendancy vs. submissiveness; (iii) Isolation; (iv) denial; and (v) Intrinsic Motivation. (6) Of the remaining factors for females clearly identifiable counterparts using the coefficient of congruence did not emerge. Hence, these factors were considered as “socio-economic status specifics". They were identified as: for females, Factor II (Introversion vs. Extroversion), Factor IV (self-sufficiency), Factor VII (upward striving), Factor IV (attitude toward earning), Factor IX (social conformity vs. rebelliousness), and Factor XI (high Ergic tension). (7) Significant or near significant loadings on motive to avoid success appeared on four factors (III- Tolerance for work pressure; IV- Attitude toward Earning; V- Denial; X- not named) for males and on lonely one factor for females (Factor VIII- Motive to avoid Success), suggesting there by that motive to avoid success in females is unidimensional while in case of males it is a multidimensional construct. (8) From the above finding no.7, it was hypothesized that same doubts and anomalies which have arisen in the work with motive to avoid success regarding sex differences may be due to the multidimensional nature to avoid success in males. (9) From the above findings 1,3 and 7, it was inferred that males and females differ quantitatively as well as qualitatively on motive to avoid success. (10) The identification of second order factors of Introversion vs. Extroversion ( Factor-II), self sufficiency (Factor-IV), upward striving (Factor- VII), Motive to avoid success (Factor-VIII) for females, and Tolerance for work pressure (Factor-III), Earning Attitude (Factor-IV), Social Conformity vs. Rebelliousness (Factor-IX) and high Ergic Tension (Factor-XI) for males further confirms the earlier findings regarding their stability across cultures. (11) The results also provide substantial support to earlier claims that ability temperamental and motivational traits cannot be fully separated. (12) Finally, the results also reveal that sex variables could influence factorial similarity and differences, yet such variables are seldom mentioned in factor analytic studies.