Matina Horner

Matina Souretis Horner, psychologist and college president, was born July 28, 1939, in Roxbury, Massachusetts, to Greek parents. She attended Bryn Mawr College where she began her studies in experimental psychology, graduating in 1961. It was at Bryn Mawr that she met and married Joseph L. Horner, a future research physicist, in 1961. They both attended the University of Michigan for graduate studies and Matina Horner earned her Ph.D. degree in 1968.

Horner's research concentrated on intelligence, motivation, and achievement. She hypothesized that high anxiety levels found in women she tested were caused not by fear of failure, but by the possibility of success. Horner reasoned that women developed high anxiety levels because they could not reconcile their desire to excel with society's view that women who were very intelligent, independent, or ambitious were unfeminine. Horner's "fear of success" theory became a potent tool in the women's movement. In 1969 Horner joined the faculty of Harvard University as a lecturer in the Department of Social Relations. The following year she was named assistant professor in the Department of Psychology.

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