Self-esteem links control beliefs to hope for success among women in five Arab countries

Self-esteem statistically accounts for part of the association between how much control women believe they have over their lives and their motivation to succeed, according to a cross-sectional survey of 1,963 women in Lebanon, Egypt, Oman, Palestine and Morocco. The study, published in Frontiers in Psychology, found that self-esteem mediated the link between an internal locus of control and hope for success, and also the link between an internal orientation and fear of failure, while for an external locus of control the indirect pathway appeared only for hope for success and not for fear of failure.

Achievement motivation is commonly described through two related but distinct tendencies: hope for success, an approach-oriented drive to pursue goals, and fear of failure, an avoidance-oriented unease in evaluative situations. Locus of control, a concept first described by Rotter, refers to a person’s belief about the extent to which they can control events affecting their lives. An internal orientation reflects the belief that outcomes depend on one’s own efforts, whereas an external orientation attributes outcomes to luck, fate or circumstances outside one’s control. Prior research, largely conducted in Western individualist samples, has associated a more internal control orientation with achievement-related motivational patterns and with higher self-esteem.

The research team recruited native Arabic-speaking women aged 18 or older through convenience and snowball sampling via an online survey administered between July 2024 and March 2025. Of 1,994 individuals who accessed the survey, 24 declined consent and seven were excluded for being under 18, leaving a final analytical sample of 1,963 participants with a mean age of 27.42 years. The sample included 543 women from Lebanon, 393 from Oman, 527 from Egypt, 282 from Palestine and 218 from Morocco. Most participants were single, childless, Muslim, urban-dwelling and unemployed, and 93.7 percent reported university-level education.

Participants completed validated Arabic versions of standardized instruments. Locus of control was measured with the four-item Internal-External Locus of Control Short Scale, which contains two items per subscale. Self-esteem was assessed with the Single-Item Self-Esteem Scale, asking respondents how true the statement “I have high self-esteem” is for them on a five-point scale. Achievement motives were measured with the revised 10-item Achievement Motives Scale, which yielded Cronbach’s alpha of 0.92 for hope for success and 0.88 for fear of failure. Participants also reported whether either parent had preferred a boy during pregnancy, a culturally relevant covariate.

Mediation analyses using the PROCESS macro with 5,000 bootstrap samples showed that higher internal locus of control was associated with higher self-esteem (B = 0.18, p < 0.001), and higher self-esteem in turn was associated with higher hope for success (B = 1.23, p < 0.001). The indirect effect of internal locus of control on hope for success through self-esteem was statistically significant (B = 0.22, 95% bootstrap CI [0.17 to 0.27]). The direct association between internal locus of control and hope for success also remained significant after accounting for self-esteem, indicating that self-esteem explained part, but not all, of the total association.

The pattern differed for fear of failure. Higher self-esteem was associated with lower fear of failure (B = −0.34, p = 0.003), and the indirect association between internal locus of control and fear of failure through self-esteem was significant (B = −0.06, 95% bootstrap CI [−0.10 to −0.02]). Yet internal locus of control retained a direct positive association with fear of failure (B = 0.43, p < 0.001), a mixed pattern the authors interpret tentatively as consistent with the possibility that a stronger sense of personal responsibility may accompany greater perceived pressure in evaluative situations, even as self-esteem buffers fear-based responses.

For external locus of control, the picture was different again. Higher external orientation was associated with lower self-esteem (B = −0.05, p < 0.001), and self-esteem was associated with higher hope for success (B = 1.67, p < 0.001), producing a significant indirect association with hope for success (B = −0.08, 95% bootstrap CI [−0.13 to −0.03]). However, the total association between external locus of control and hope for success was not statistically significant, and the direct association after adjustment was positive. No indirect association through self-esteem emerged for fear of failure (B = 0.001, 95% bootstrap CI [−0.01 to 0.01]), suggesting that other factors, such as uncertainty, anxiety or concerns about social evaluation, may be associated with fear-based motivation among women with stronger external control beliefs.

Sensitivity analyses that entered all measured demographic variables simultaneously as covariates left the direction, magnitude and significance of the indirect associations unchanged. Bivariate analyses also revealed contextual patterns: women in Oman reported the highest mean hope for success, while Palestinian women scored significantly lower than women in Lebanon, Oman and Egypt. Moroccan women reported the highest fear of failure, scoring significantly higher than women in Lebanon, Oman and Palestine. Women reporting no perceived parental gender preference had the highest hope for success, whereas those reporting that a parent had preferred a boy had significantly higher fear of failure than the other groups, preliminary evidence that family gender socialization may be relevant to women’s motivational profiles.

The authors situate these findings in a cultural context where collectivist orientations, strong family structures and gendered socialization may shape how control, self-worth and achievement are experienced. The MENA region ranks last among world regions in the World Economic Forum’s 2024 Global Gender Gap report, with a parity score of 61.7 percent, even as women’s educational attainment expands rapidly. In collectivist settings, self-esteem may be relationally constructed through social belonging and family approval, and attributing outcomes to external forces may not signal diminished agency in the way individualist frameworks suggest. The authors caution, however, that these cultural mechanisms were not directly measured in the study.

Several limitations temper the conclusions. The cross-sectional design cannot establish temporal ordering or causality, and the brief two-item locus-of-control subscales showed low internal consistency in this sample, with Spearman-Brown coefficients of 0.35 for the internal and 0.46 for the external subscale, and measurement invariance of the IE-4 was not supported across the five countries. The online convenience and snowball sampling likely over-represented educated, socially connected women, and the single-item self-esteem measure may not capture relational dimensions of self-worth. The authors emphasize that the findings should be understood as preliminary statistical associations rather than causal evidence, and they call for longitudinal studies with stronger measures, more diverse samples and explicit examination of country-level and cultural moderators to clarify how control beliefs, self-evaluation and achievement motivation unfold among Arab women over time.

Subject of Research: Statistical mediation of self-esteem in the association between locus of control and achievement motives among women in five Arab countries

Article Title: The mediating role of self-esteem in the association between locus of control and fear of failure and hope for success among women in five Arab countries

Article References: Gedeon, E., El Zoghbi, C., Awarkeh, L., Salameh, C., Geagea, A., Malaeb, D., Alhuwailah, A., Helmy, M., Rashid, T., Barakat, M., Fekih-Romdhane, F., Hallit, S., Obeid, S., & El Khoury, M. A. (2026). The mediating role of self-esteem in the association between locus of control and fear of failure and hope for success among women in five Arab countries. Frontiers in Psychology, 17, Article 1890383. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1890383

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1890383

Keywords: locus of control, self-esteem, achievement motivation, hope for success, fear of failure, Arab women, cross-sectional study, mediation analysis, cultural psychology, gender socialization, collectivism, Lebanon