The Structure Characteristic Of Perfectionism And Its Influence On Emotional Health

Perfectionism is a personality trait. Focus of perfectionism research has changed from traditional maladaptive functioning to two-factor solution. Numerous studies pay attention to the negative correlates and consequence of perfectionism, developmental factors, and treatment issues over the last 30 years. Recently, the new characteristic in perfectionism research field is to divide perfectionism into adaptive and maladaptive subtypes. An emerging body of evidence has supported the distinction of adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism. Adaptive perfectionism reflects a tendency to set flexibly high personal standards and regulate standards with condition, allow of mistakes and failures in living up to high standards, retaining the ability to be satisfied with one’s achievement, derived by intrinsic motivation. Adaptive perfectionism correlated with positive psychological adjustment, such as self-esteem, satisfaction with life and positive affect. In contrast, maladaptive perfectionism is characterized by the setting of inflexible and unattainably high standards, concerning over mistakes and failure, the inability to take pleasure in one’s achievement, and being derived by extrinsic motivation. Maladaptive perfectionism correlated with negative psychological adjustment, including depression, anxiety, social phobia, obsessive-compulsive disorder and eating disorders.For adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism, few researches determined the perfectionism should be conceptualized as a global personality construct or as a domain-specific construct, and the extent to which perfectionism is stable or fluctuate across domains and situation contexts. Previous investigations have indicated that adaptive perfectionism was related with positive psychological adjustment, in contrast, maladaptive perfectionism correlated with psychological maladjustment. But a few of researches could answer that the adaptive perfectionism play positive or negative role under stress, and whether the stress condition aggravates the negative influence of maladaptive perfectionism or not.Based on these conditions, the present study comprised of 8 sub-studies. College students participated in present study and completed new perfectionism scale for college students. In section 1, an perfectionism scale for college students was developed and its psychometric quality was examined to evaluate adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism; In section 2, the correlation of adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism with emotional health was explored; Section 3 selected both academic achievement and social encounter domain of college students, and determined if adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism levels varied with the domains; Section 4, 5, and 6 examined the extent to which perfectionism is stable or fluctuate across situation contexts. Trait and state perfectionism were compared in section 4 both under academic achievement and social encounter stress conditions; Section 5 revealed the extent to which state perfectionism was explained by trait perfectionism to examine the trait stability of perfectionism; Section 6 examined state dependency on positive affect of adaptive perfectionism, and state dependency on negative affect of maladaptive perfectionism; Section 7 and 8 investigated how trait and state perfectionism influence positive and negative affect in the 2 types of situation, to determine if the adaptation of perfectionism is stable.The results indicated that:(1)The perfectionism scale for college students consists of two sub-scales. Adaptive sub-scale has four dimensions, including realistic personal standards, intrinsic motivation to striving for perfectionism, satisfied with performance, tolerate failures and mistakes. Maladaptive sub-scale consists of four dimensions: unrealistic personal standards, extrinsic motivation to striving for perfectionism, inability to satisfy with performance, concern over mistakes. The adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism scale for college students had acceptable psychometric quality.(2)In totally, adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism levels didn’t varied significantly between academic achievement and social encounter domain. Compare with social encounter domain, students represent higher realistic personal standards and intrinsic motivation levels, and lower extrinsic motivation level in academic achievement domain.(3)Adaptive perfectionism has absolute stability under social encounter stress, and maladaptive perfectionism has absolute stability under academic achievement stress. Both in 2 stress conditions, maladaptive perfectionism has higher relative stability and trait stability than adaptive perfectionism. Compare with social encounter condition, perfectionism has higher state dependency in academic achievement condition. And adaptive perfectionism has lowest trait stability and highest state dependence in academic achievement condition.(4)Adaptive perfectionism associated with positive affect, and maladaptive perfectionism associated with negative affect. Under academic achievement and social encounter stress, trait perfectionism influenced emotional health through state perfectionism. In successful feedback condition, adaptive perfectionism predicted higher positive affect level. And maladaptive perfectionism predicted higher negative affect level in all three feedback conditions.