Self-Oriented Perfectionism and its Relationship to Positive and Negative Affect: The Mediation of Positive and Negative Perfectionism Cognitions

Abstract

has been linked to psychopathology but can have both positive and negative elements. The purpose of the present study is to examine whether the relationship of SOP to positive and negative affect would be mediated by the presence of specific cognitions regarding "Personal Standards (PS)," and "Concern over Mistakes (CM)" as well as goal motivations. Two mediations involved in SOP were hypothesized: (1) in the presence of approach goals, the cognition of PS emerges from activated SOP and leads to positive affect; and (2) in the presence of avoidant goals, the cognition of CM emerges from activated SOP and leads to negative affect. In Study 1, 358 college students completed the research questionnaire, and structural equation modeling was used to test the mediation model. In Study 2, 60 participants, 30 rated high and 30 rated low in SOP, were presented with either an approach or an avoidant goal for an experimental task, and asked to rate their perfectionism cognitions and affects. The findings provided partial support for the hypotheses.

Multidimensional Sexual Perfectionism

“…In contrast, we expected partner-prescribed and socially prescribed sexual perfectionism to be maladaptive forms of sexual perfectionism showing only positive relationships with negative aspects of perfectionism (and negative relationships with positive aspects of sexuality). Moreover, from research on multidimensional perfectionism cognitions (Kobori & Tanno, 2005;Stoeber, Kobori, & Tanno, 2010), we expected self-oriented, partnerprescribed, and socially prescribed sexual perfectionism to show positive relationships with negative perfectionism cognitions during sex regarding the pursuit of perfection, but only partner-prescribed and socially prescribed sexual perfectionism to show positive relationships with concern over mistakes cognitions. Finally, based on previous findings from research on multidimensional perfectionism demonstrating that the overlap between different forms of perfectionism may obscure the differential pattern of unique relationships these forms have with positive and negative characteristics, processes, and outcomes (Hill, Huelsman, & Araujo, 2010;Stoeber & Otto, 2006), we expected the pattern of relationships to be more differentiated when the overlap between the four forms of sexual perfectionism was controlled for and unique relationships were examined by means of multiple regressions.…”

Perfectionism and Performance

“…Disregarding the studies on sport performance (which are discussed in the following section), there are so far only four studies differentiating perfectionistic strivings and perfectionistic concerns that investigated non-academic indicators of performance and found significant relationships between perfectionism and performance: one investigating performance in music competitions (Stoeber & Eismann, 2007), one investigating performance in aptitude tests (Stoeber & Kersting, 2007), and two investigating performance in simple laboratory tasks (Kobori & Tanno, 2005;Stoeber, Chesterman, & Tarn, 2010). …”

“…Regarding performance in simple laboratory tasks, a first study (Kobori & Tanno, 2005) investigated performance in a computerized version of the Stroop color-naming task (Stroop, 1935) in which the names of colors were presented in differently colored text (e.g., the word "GREEN" is presented in red letters) and participants had to press a key representing the color of the word's letters, ignoring the word's meaning. The task was paced by the computer program (participants had 800 ms to respond to each word).…”

“…In contrast to Kobori and Tanno's (2005) study, the task was self-paced because the authors wanted to measure time-on-task (i.e., the time participants took to complete the task) as an objective measure of effort that participants put into the task. Results showed that perfectionistic concerns showed no significant correlations with either task performance or time-on-task.…”

The Multidimensional Perfectionism Cognitions Inventory–English (MPCI–E): Reliability, Validity, and Relationships With Positive and Negative Affect

“…The other two studies investigating the validity of the MPCI examined the differential validity of the MPCI with respect to positive and negative affect (Kobori, 2006;Kobori & Tanno, 2005). Participants completed the Personal Standards and Concern over Mistakes scales of the MPCI and a measure of positive and negative affect (Ogawa, Monchi, Kikuya, & Suzuki, 2000), based on the Positive Affect Negative Affect Schedule (Watson, Clark, & Tellegen, 1988), that asked participants about their positive and negative affect during the past week.…”