Perfectionism has been defined as a dispositional tendency to set excessively high performance standards and to then evaluate one's performance in an overly critical manner (Frost, Marten, Lahart, & Rosenblate, 1990). Using the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale developed by these authors, the current investigation exam ined the relationship of two dimensions of perfectionism, high personal standards (PS) and maladaptive concern over mistakes (CM), to patterns of behavior, cogni tion, and affect in an ecologically valid evaluative context a semester-long col lege course. For the 90 women attend ing this psychology course, PS was associated with more frequent study behavior, evaluation of the course as more important, higher standards and expectations for academic performance, and better grades across the semester. Like PS, CM was associated with more frequent study behav ior, but it was also related to perceptions of greater course difficulty, higher anxiety, and more negative mood prior to examinations. CM was not associated with better grades. The discrepancy between standards for performance on the midterm exam and actual midterm exam grades and attributions about these grades were also pre dictive of academic behaviors later in the semester and performance on the final examination. Implications of these findings and recommendations for future inves tigations are discussed.
Emotionally distant and controlling child-rearing attitudes have been reported to characterize the parents of American or western European social phobics in previous research. However, the notion that these parental attitudes may be associated with social anxiety only in some cultures has not been investigated. The present study examined social anxiety among American social phobics and American and Chinese/Chinese American volunteer samples and how it may relate to their parents' child-rearing attitudes. Multivariate analyses of variance revealed overall group differences. Both volunteer samples reported lower levels of anxiety than social phobics. Parents of Chinese/Chinese Americans and social phobics were reported to be similar in their (1) isolation of children from social activities; (2) over-emphasis of others' opinions; and (3) use of shame tactics for discipline (more so than American volunteers' parents). However, parents of nonsocial phobics were more likely to attend family social activities than social phobics' parents. Overall, the association between a reported parenting style emphasizing others' opinions and shame tactics and social anxiety in their adult children was more evident in both American samples than among Chinese/Chinese Americans.
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