Striving to Avoid Inferiority Scales

1. Abstract

The Striving to Avoid Inferiority Scale (SAIS), developed by Paul Gilbert and colleagues in 2007, is a multidimensional psychometric instrument formulated within an evolutionary and social mentality framework. The instrument evaluates individuals’ perceived pressures to compete, achieve, and maintain social standing, juxtaposed against beliefs concerning unconditional social acceptance and the anticipated interpersonal repercussions of failure. The scale comprises two primary operational components: Part 1 (SAIS-P1), consisting of 31 items scored on a 5-point Likert scale (0 = Never to 4 = Always), which measures two distinct dimensions—Insecure Striving (19 items assessing the compulsive need to outperform others to circumvent inferiority and marginalization) and Secure Non-striving (12 items evaluating the experiential certainty of being unconditionally valued regardless of competitive outcomes); and Part 2 (SAIS-P2), consisting of 11 items scored on a 10-point continuum (1 = Don’t agree to 10 = Completely agree), which delineates the specific perceived social threats underpinning competitive striving across three domains: Losing Out (3 items), Being Overlooked (4 items), and Active Rejection (4 items). Psychometric validation across student, general adult, and clinical populations confirms strong construct validity, distinct factorial separation, and robust internal consistency, with Cronbach’s alpha coefficients typically ranging from .84 to .90 for Insecure Striving, .69 to .82 for Secure Non-striving, and .79 to .85 across Part 2 subscales. Insecure striving correlates positively with psychopathology indicators including depression, trait anxiety, shame, and self-criticism, whereas Secure Non-striving provides a significant psychological buffer associated with social safety, self-compassion, and emotional resilience.

2. Keywords

Striving to Avoid Inferiority Scale, SAIS, social rank theory, insecure striving, secure non-striving, evolutionary psychology, social safeness, shame, depression, perfectionism, Paul Gilbert, competitive mentality

3. Authors

The Striving to Avoid Inferiority Scales were designed and validated by a collaborative research team led by Paul Gilbert, alongside Christopher Broomhead, Chris Irons, Kirsten McEwan, Rebecca Bellew, Allan Mills, Caroline Gale, and Rachel Knibb. The primary development research was conducted within the Mental Health Research Unit at Kingsway Hospital (Derby, United Kingdom) in affiliation with the University of Derby.

• Paul Gilbert, Ph.D., FBPsS: Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Derby and Founder of Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT). His pioneering work examines the evolutionary bases of mood disorders, shame, and rank-related competitive strategies.
• Chris Irons, DClinPsy: Clinical psychologist, researcher, and prominent international trainer in Compassion Focused Therapy, specializing in attachment patterns and self-criticism.
• Kirsten McEwan, Ph.D.: Associate Professor and researcher investigating psychophysiological biomarkers of social connection, heart rate variability, and mental health interventions.
• Co-authors (Christopher Broomhead, Rebecca Bellew, Allan Mills, Caroline Gale, Rachel Knibb): Clinical practitioners and quantitative researchers affiliated with the Mental Health Research Unit, Derby, and academic institutions in the United Kingdom.

4. Purpose

The primary purpose of the Striving to Avoid Inferiority Scale is to operationalize and differentiate between two qualitatively divergent motivations for achievement: functional, mastery-oriented self-actualization versus threat-based, defensive competitive striving intended to forestall interpersonal rejection and social devaluation. While mainstream psychological assessment often treats motivation and achievement orientation as inherently adaptive virtues, evolutionary psychopathology emphasizes that excessive, compulsive striving frequently operates as an involuntary defensive response against perceived vulnerability, marginalization, and rank reduction.

In clinical contexts, the SAIS addresses critical diagnostic and therapeutic needs by isolating whether a patient’s drive for success is fueled by intrinsically rewarding aspirations (associated with high Secure Non-striving) or by an agonizing terror of being perceived as defective, useless, or inferior (characterized by high Insecure Striving). This conceptual nuance is vital for evaluating conditions such as clinical depression, social anxiety disorder, eating disorders, and maladaptive forms of perfectionism. Patients caught in compulsive insecure striving often display severe burn-out, profound somatic stress, hyper-vigilance regarding social comparison, and intense self-directed hostility when perfectionistic goals are thwarted.

In research contexts, the instrument serves as an empirical tool to investigate social rank dynamics, attachment styles, and interpersonal schemas. By dividing the measurement into Part 1 (cognitive beliefs regarding competitive worth versus unconditional acceptance) and Part 2 (concrete anticipated catastrophic outcomes of failing to compete), the SAIS equips researchers to pinpoint the precise social threats that drive maladaptive behavior. For instance, researchers can delineate whether an individual’s achievement anxiety stems primarily from a fear of passive neglect (Being Overlooked) or from anticipations of explicit hostility, shaming, and ostracism (Active Rejection). Consequently, the SAIS bridges cognitive-behavioral perspectives on core schemas with evolutionary models of biosocial status regulation.

5. Psychological Construct

The psychological construct evaluated by the SAIS is rooted in the dialectic between rank-based, threat-focused competitiveness and affiliative, safeness-based social connectedness. Human survival across evolutionary history has relied on navigating both dominance/prestige hierarchies (the rank system) and cooperative, nurturing alliances (the affiliative/attachment system). When social environments prioritize cutthroat competition over mutual care, or when developmental attachment figures provide love conditioned solely on performance, individuals conceptualize human relationships through a strictly vertical lens.

Insecure Striving

Insecure Striving embodies the belief that one’s fundamental human worth, social safety, and right to belong must be relentlessly earned through superior performance, visible achievements, and outward prestige. Individuals scoring high on this dimension view social existence as an unforgiving arena (e.g., “Life is a competition”) where resting, displaying vulnerability, or experiencing failure inevitably precipitates subordination, contempt, and abandonment. Such individuals do not strive solely for the joy of accomplishment; rather, they strive to avoid the catastrophic psychological descent into perceived inferiority, weakness, and worthlessness. This dimension reflects an overactivated threat-and-protection motivational system coupled with chronic social comparison.

Secure Non-striving

Conversely, Secure Non-striving captures the core psychological certainty that one’s social place, relational acceptability, and inherent human value are unconditional and decoupled from relative rank or tangible success. Individuals with high levels of Secure Non-striving possess internal working models of secure attachment, maintaining conviction that significant others will offer warmth, care, and validation even in moments of defeat, incompetence, or error (e.g., “Win or lose, people accept me anyway”). This dimension reflects a fully functional social safeness system, which downregulates physiological stress, dampens hyper-competitiveness, and allows for authentic self-compassion.

Threat Motivations: Losing Out, Overlooked, and Active Rejection

Part 2 of the construct elucidates the specific threat appraisals driving the competitive imperative:

• Losing Out: Encompasses practical and evolutionary fears of resource deprivation, missed life opportunities, and falling behind one’s peer group in the socioeconomic arena.
• Being Overlooked: Reflects fears of passive social marginalization, emotional neglect, invisibility, and irrelevance within the community.
• Active Rejection: Represents the most acutely threatening social outcome: overt condemnation, public humiliation, aggressive shaming, and deliberate social expulsion resulting from low status or perceived inadequacy.

6. Theoretical Framework

The theoretical framework underpinning the SAIS synthesizes Evolutionary Social Rank Theory (Gilbert, 1992, 2005) with Attachment Theory (Bowlby, 1969, 1973) and contemporary models of Social Mentality Theory. Within evolutionary psychology, animal hierarchies rely on agonistic interactions wherein subordinate individuals must recognize their inferior rank to avoid lethal attacks from dominant conspecifics. Subordinate animals utilize involuntary subordinate strategies (e.g., behavioral inhibition, hyper-arousal, avoidance of eye contact, stress-induced immobility) to survive within competitive hierarchies.

In modern human societies, direct physical aggression is largely replaced by prestige-based competition involving intellect, occupational status, attractiveness, and material wealth. However, the ancient neurological structures governing rank and status evaluation remain active. Gilbert posited that individuals operate across distinct social mentalities—specialized neurocomputational algorithms tailored to specific relational contexts:

• The Competitive Mentality: Operates on social rank calculations, upward and downward social comparisons, sensitivity to dominance versus submissiveness, and anxiety over status loss. Self-esteem in this mentality is precarious, relative, and contingent on external validation.
• The Affiliative Mentality: Operates on mutual support, cooperation, sharing, caretaking, and social safeness. Here, self-worth is rooted in unconditional belonging and intrinsic dignity, fostering the release of soothing neurochemicals such as oxytocin and activation of the vagal parasympathetic system.

When an individual perceives that their social group or familial system evaluates members strictly through a competitive lens, the affiliative mentality is suppressed, and the competitive mentality becomes hyper-sensitized. Striving shifts from self-actualizing exploration to defensive, threat-avoidant labor. Inferiority is perceived not merely as a minor setback, but as an existential social hazard threatening isolation, contempt, and vulnerability to exploitation. The SAIS formalizes this theoretical architecture into empirically measurable psychological axes.

7. Validity

Extensive psychometric investigations have established strong construct, convergent, discriminant, and criterion-related validity for both parts of the SAIS.

Construct and Factorial Validity

Construct validity was initially established by Gilbert et al. (2007) via principal components and confirmatory analyses demonstrating that Insecure Striving and Secure Non-striving represent two separate, orthogonal or weakly negatively correlated dimensions rather than opposite ends of a single continuum. Part 2 consistently demonstrates three distinct correlated factors corresponding to the anticipated threats of losing out, being overlooked, and being actively rejected.

Convergent Validity

Insecure Striving exhibits statistically robust, positive correlations with related clinical and cognitive constructs:

• Internal and External Shame: Insecure Striving correlates strongly with the Other As Shamer Scale (OAS; r = .50 to .62) and the Experience of Shame Scale (ESS; r = .48 to .58), corroborating that defensive competition is fueled by fears of exposing a defective self to hostile scrutiny.
• Maladaptive Perfectionism: Marked positive associations emerge with the Socially Prescribed Perfectionism subscale of the Hewitt & Flett Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (r = .55 to .65) and conditional self-worth measures.
• Depression, Anxiety, and Stress: Consistent moderate-to-strong correlations appear with the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS-21), with correlation coefficients typically spanning .40 to .55 for depression, .38 to .52 for anxiety, and .42 to .56 for chronic stress.
• Submissive Behavior: Positive correlations with the Submissive Behavior Scale (SBS; r = .35 to .48) demonstrate that individuals who compulsively strive also perceive themselves as chronically vulnerable to social subordination.

Conversely, Secure Non-striving demonstrates high convergent validity with positive psychological resources, correlating positively with the Social Safeness and Pleasure Scale (SSPS; r = .50 to .68), self-compassion, and secure attachment styles.

Discriminant Validity

Discriminant validity is evidenced by the clear functional divergence between Insecure Striving and adaptive achievement striving (such as pure self-oriented perfectionism or intrinsic mastery orientation). While mastery motivation correlates with positive affect and conscientiousness without elevating psychological distress, Insecure Striving uniquely predicts negative affect, burnout, and distress even after controlling for baseline achievement levels.

8. Reliability

The Striving to Avoid Inferiority Scale exhibits robust internal consistency and temporal stability across diverse cultural, non-clinical, and clinical cohorts.

Internal Consistency

In the foundational validation study by Gilbert et al. (2007), Cronbach’s alpha coefficients across student and community samples demonstrated satisfactory to high internal consistency:

• SAIS Part 1 — Insecure Striving: α = .84 to .89, indicating excellent item cohesion and construct reliability across its 19 items.
• SAIS Part 1 — Secure Non-striving: α = .69 to .82 across different validation samples, satisfying psychometric criteria for exploratory and applied clinical research across its 12 items.
• SAIS Part 2 — Losing Out: α = .84, demonstrating excellent homogeneity across the 3 items.
• SAIS Part 2 — Being Overlooked: α = .80, reflecting solid scale reliability across the 4 items.
• SAIS Part 2 — Active Rejection: α = .79 to .83 across samples, demonstrating consistent metric stability for the 4 items.

Subsequent international validations (e.g., European, North American, and East Asian adaptations) have mirrored these reliability figures, with composite reliability coefficients routinely exceeding .80 for Insecure Striving and Part 2 subscales.

Test-Retest Reliability

Longitudinal stability evaluations over 4- to 6-week intervals show adequate test-retest reliability (Pearson’s r ranging from .76 to .84 for Insecure Striving and .72 to .79 for Secure Non-striving), confirming that while beliefs about competition and social safety can fluctuate in response to major life events or targeted psychotherapy, they represent relatively stable, trait-like cognitive-affective schemas under normative conditions.

9. Factor Analysis

Psychometric evaluations employing Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) have repeatedly clarified the structural properties of both parts of the SAIS.

Part 1 Factor Structure

In initial principal components analyses with oblimin and varimax rotations, the 31 items of Part 1 segregated cleanly into a two-factor solution explaining over 35% of the total variance:

• Factor 1 (Insecure Striving): Items 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 25, 27, 30, and 31. Item factor loadings typically range from .45 to .73. Items such as Item 20 (“If I don’t strive to achieve I’ll be seen as inferior to other people”) and Item 7 (“I never feel my place in society is secure but have to strive to prove myself worthy of it”) exhibit the highest saturation on this threat-driven competitive factor.
• Factor 2 (Secure Non-striving): Items 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 16, 21, 24, 26, 28, and 29. Factor loadings span from .40 to .71, anchored strongly by items reflecting relational safeness (e.g., Item 12: “Whether I succeed or fail, people value me as a person”; Item 6: “Win or lose, people accept me anyway”).

Confirmatory Factor Analysis confirms that a two-factor oblique model demonstrates significantly superior fit compared to a single-factor unidimensional model. Standard structural equation modeling benchmarks support acceptable goodness-of-fit indices (CFI > .90, TLI > .89, RMSEA ≤ .06, SRMR ≤ .05).

Part 2 Factor Structure

Factor analysis of the 11 items in Part 2 confirms three distinct yet correlated latent dimensions accounting for over 65% of the variance:

• Factor 1: Losing Out (3 items; e.g., missing opportunities, falling behind, not advancing). Primary factor loadings range from .72 to .86.
• Factor 2: Overlooked (4 items; e.g., being passed over, ignored, or forgotten). Loadings range from .68 to .82.
• Factor 3: Active Rejection (4 items; e.g., others actively pushing you away, shaming, or intentionally excluding you). Loadings range from .65 to .84.

Second-order hierarchical modeling reveals that while the three threat domains load onto a overarching superordinate construct of “Social Relational Threat of Failure,” retaining the three-factor profile provides superior clinical utility for identifying specific fears.

10. Instrument / Measurement Tool

• Complete Tool Name: Striving to Avoid Inferiority Scales (SAIS)
• Authors: Paul Gilbert, Christopher Broomhead, Chris Irons, Kirsten McEwan, Rebecca Bellew, Allan Mills, Caroline Gale, and Rachel Knibb
• Publication Year: 2007
• Target Population: Adolescents and adults (ages 16 and older); applicable across non-clinical, academic, organizational, and psychiatric samples
• Total Item Count: 42 total items
  • Part 1: 31 items (19 Insecure Striving items, 12 Secure Non-striving items)
  • Part 2: 11 items (3 Losing Out items, 4 Overlooked items, 4 Active Rejection items)
• Administration Format: Self-report questionnaire; paper-and-pencil or digital/computerized administration
• Estimated Administration Time: 8 to 12 minutes
• Response Formats:
  • Part 1: 5-point Likert scale (0 = NEVER, 1 = RARELY, 2 = SOMETIMES, 3 = MOSTLY, 4 = ALWAYS)
  • Part 2: 10-point rating scale ranging from 1 (Don’t agree) to 10 (Completely agree)
• Scoring and Subscale Formulas:
  • Part 1 — Insecure Striving: Sum of Items 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 25, 27, 30, and 31. (Theoretical range: 0–76). Higher scores signify greater perceived pressure to compete to forestall inferiority and marginalization.
  • Part 1 — Secure Non-striving: Sum of Items 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 16, 21, 24, 26, 28, and 29. (Theoretical range: 0–48). Higher scores indicate higher perceived social safeness and unconditional belonging.
  • Part 2 — Losing Out: Sum of items under Subsection 1 (“You will not advance in life”, “You will miss out on opportunities”, “You will fall behind others”). (Theoretical range: 3–30).
  • Part 2 — Overlooked: Sum of items under Subsection 2 (“People will overlook you”, “People will not take much interest in you”, “People will pass you over”, “People will forget about you”). (Theoretical range: 4–40).
  • Part 2 — Active Rejection: Sum of items under Subsection 3 (“Others will actively reject you”, “Others will push you away”, “Others will be critical and shame you”, “Others will go out of their way to actively exclude you”). (Theoretical range: 4–40).

11. Permissions & Fee and Test Year

The Striving to Avoid Inferiority Scales were formulated and formally published in 2007 by Paul Gilbert and colleagues in the British Journal of Social Psychology. The scale is copyright © 2007 by Paul Gilbert et al. and the British Psychological Society.

In accordance with standard open-science and clinical research practices advocated by Professor Paul Gilbert and the Compassionate Mind Foundation, the SAIS is available without fee for non-commercial academic research, pedagogical use, and clinical assessment. Researchers and practitioners are permitted to reproduce and administer the questionnaire without formal written royalties, provided that full scientific attribution and appropriate citation of the original 2007 empirical publication are documented. Commercial use, reproduction inside proprietary fee-charging testing batteries, or digital redistribution behind paywalls requires formal copyright clearance from the authors and the original publisher.

12. References

• Bowlby, J. (1969). Attachment and loss: Vol. 1. Attachment. Basic Books.
• Bowlby, J. (1973). Attachment and loss: Vol. 2. Separation: Anxiety and anger. Basic Books.
• Gilbert, P. (1992). Depression: The evolution of powerlessness. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
• Gilbert, P. (2000). The relationship of shame, social anxiety and depression: The role of the evaluation of social rank. Clinical Psychology & Psychotherapy, 7(3), 174–189. https://doi.org/10.1002/1097-4679(200007)7:3<174::AID-CPP236>3.0.CO;2-U
• Gilbert, P. (2005). Compassion: Conceptualisations, research and use in psychotherapy. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203003459
• Gilbert, P., Broomhead, C., Irons, C., McEwan, K., Bellew, R., Mills, A., Gale, C., & Knibb, R. (2007). Striving to avoid inferiority: Scale development and its relationship to depression, anxiety and stress. British Journal of Social Psychology, 46(3), 633–648. https://doi.org/10.1348/014466606X157789
• Hewitt, P. L., & Flett, G. L. (1991). Perfectionism in the self and social contexts: Conceptualization, assessment, and association with psychopathology. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 60(3), 456–470. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.60.3.456
• Irons, C., & Gilbert, P. (2005). Evolved mechanisms in adolescent anxiety and depression symptoms: The role of the social rank and attachment systems. Journal of Adolescence, 28(3), 325–341. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.adolescence.2004.07.004

13. Items of the Scale (Questionnaire)