The Correlative Factors Of Perfectionism' Formation And The Relationship Between Perfectionism, Academic Performance And Depression

Perfectionism is a stable personality trait having high personal standard to pursue perfectionism positively, but having discrepancy once failure to attain personal standard and self-critical negatively. A lot of studies show that parents'perfectionism, parenting style and parent-child attachment are close factors connected with perfectionism's formation. And perfectionism is also close to with individual psychology health and high achievement. However, there is no study discussing the relationship among parents' perfectionism, parenting style, parent-child attachment and individual perfectionism, the literature on perfectionism has downplayed its positive psychological advantages on individual, the association between perfectionism and depression is so close that to help perfectionist to decrease depression effectively, it's need to examine the other psychological mechanism. So, it's very important to discuss the causes and results of perfectionism for understanding the nature of perfectionism personality.1766 middle-school students and college student participanted the present study, we explored the correlative factors of perfectionism's formation and development, and the relationship between perfectionism, academic performance and depression. Five studies are conducted in this paper:In Study 1, Chinese Revision of Buri Parental authority questionnaire (PAQ) According to the understanding of parenting styles under Chinese cultural background, we revised the PAQ in two college student samples and examine the reliability and validity of Chinese Revision of PAQ.In Study 2, we discussed the correlative factors of perfectionism's formation, to establish a comprehensive model of the perfectionism's development. And we validated the mediating effect of parenting style and parent-child attachment on parents' perfectionism and children'perfectionism by analyzing structure equation models.In Study 3, the correlation research among perfectionism, achievement goal orientation and academic performance is conducted. The purpose of this study is to explore the path of perfectionism's high-standard dimention on predicting individual study and social-adaption.In Study 4, the relationship between perfectionism and depression is examined, and we validated the mediating effect of achievement goal orientation and unconditional self-acceptance on perfectionism's discrepancy dimention and depression by analyzing SEM.In Study 5, we used high standard and discrepancy of the Chinese Revised Version of APS-R to cluster 1188 participants, the sample was divided into four groups by median method, including perfectionist (a group with high-high standard and high-discrepancy), pursuing excellence individual (a group with high-high standard and low-discrepancy) non-perfectionist (a group with low high-standard and low-discrepancy, a group with low high-standard and high-discrepancy). Analysis of variance was conducted to examine group differences on academic performance, depression, unconditional self-acceptance and achievement goal orientation.What we have found were as follows:(1) Chinese Revision of PAQ has good reliability and validity, and it can be used to measure the authoritative, authoritarian, permissive parenting types of parenting style under the Chinese culture backbround.(2) Parents'perfectionism can predict children's perfectionism directly. Mother authoritarian style and mother alienated parent-child attachment partly mediated the association between mother perfectionism's discrepancy dimension and children perfectionism's discrepancy dimension; mother authoritative style and mother trust, communication parent-child partly mediated the association between mother perfectionism's high-standard dimension and children perfectionism's high-standard dimension. (3) Perfectionism has double natures of positive aspect and negative aspect. On the indicator of high-school students'academic performance, the high-standard of perfectionism can predict academic performance by way of the mastery learning of achievement goal orientation; on the indicator of college students'depression, conditional self-acceptance and performance-avoiding achievement orientation were partial mediators between perfectionism's discrepancy dimension and depression.(4) There was no significant difference in academic performance among perfectionist, pursuing excellence individual and non-perfectionists. The scores of mastery learning, unconditional self-acceptance for pursuing excellence individual were statistically higher than that for non-perfectionists, and the score of depression for pursuing excellence individual was statistically lower than that for non-perfectionists and perfectionist; The scores of performance-approaching, performance-avoiding, depression and conditional self acceptance for perfectionist were statistically higher than that for pursuing excellence individual and non-perfectionists.The results of above suggest that parent'perfectionism, parenting style and parent-child attachment can predict children perfectionism, and the developed perfectionism personality, its high-standard dimension combined with mastery learning can help individual get excellent performance, but the discrepancy of perfectionism can destroy individual psychological harmony status due to conditional self-acceptance and performance goal orientation, which making individual feel depression. So, perfectionism is a multidimensional personality trait comprising positive and negative aspects, we should help perfectionists to scruitinize the suitability of their high standard and to decrease their discrepancy for their health.