Career decision-making and the self-critical aspects of perfectionism

Questions about how an individual selects a career have been of particular importance to practitioners who want to know what needs to be done to help individuals make a career choice and especially what needs to be done to help individuals with problems in choosing. The potential links between personality and vocational behavior as a means for identifying individual differences in career decision-making have, however, been largely unexplored. The present study attempted this objective by examining the relation between specific components of the career decision-making process and the personality trait of perfectionism, which has been the focus of increased empirical attention with regard to its relation to numerous indices of psychological functioning. Specifically of interest was whether the self-critical dimensions of perfectionism contribute unique predictive variance, beyond that accounted for by the more well-studied personality dimensions of neuroticism, and conscientiousness, in career decision-making self-efficacy and progress in attaining choice commitment; and to which aspects of perfectionism the additional variance is attributable.; In hierarchical regression analyses, the set of five self-critical dimensions of perfectionism made a significant contribution, beyond that accounted for by neuroticism and conscientiousness, to predicting variance in both career decision making criterion variables. However, none of the specific perfectionism dimensions showed a unique contribution to this variance, suggesting that they may reflect components that together comprise a single, higher-order perfectionism construct. Results include supplemental hierarchical regression analyses of two derived higher-order constructs labeled self-critical and self-standards perfectionism. It was found that the additional predictive variance in career decision-making was mostly attributable to the variable of self-critical perfectionism. Also, it was found that self-critical perfectionism operated as a suppressor variable in the regression on career decision-making self-efficacy such that the statistical removal of the confound between the two perfectionism variables caused a small but significant increase in the magnitude of the relationship between self-standards perfectionism and self-efficacy. Results are discussed relative to how perfectionism may relate to problems in the career decision-making process; and how the finding of a single, higher-order perfectionism construct is consistent with a more traditional conceptualization of perfectionism as a maladaptive personality trait.