The role of circadian typology in the relationship between perfectionism and workaholism

ABSTRACT

Workaholism is a work-related addiction, and the study of its antecedents has a strong individual and social impact. Several studies reported high trait perfectionism in individuals exhibiting workaholism. Although the relationship between perfectionism and workaholism is quite consistent in the literature, it is not yet clear which biological underlying mechanisms might explain this relationship. From a chronopsychological perspective, it has been widely demonstrated that evening-type individuals are more prone to develop addictive behaviour. In the present study, we investigated, for the first time, the role of circadian typology in the relationship between perfectionistic concerns and workaholism. A group of Italian workers (N = 369; 60.70% females; mean age of 38.60 years) took part in a survey. Participants filled in the Bergen Work Addiction Scale (for workaholism), the Morningness-Eveningness Questionnaire (for circadian typology), and the Short Almost-Perfect Scale (for perfectionism). In addition to age, we controlled for workload using the Job Content Questionnaire. Beyond the confirmation of the relationship between perfectionism and workaholism, we found that in high perfectionistic individuals, evening-types reported higher score in Bergen Work Addiction Scale. Based on these findings, limitations and suggestions for future research are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Morningness-eveningness
• workaholism
• addiction
• perfectionism
• personality
• moderation analysis

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. We also conducted the same analyses adding another control variable as working hours per week. In summary, the main results were similar: for the ANCOVA, although evening-types reported higher levels of workaholism (2.74 ± 0.14) than neither-types (2.65 ± 0.05) and morning-types (2.52 ± 0.80), the circadian typology resulted not significant (F_2,353 = 1.23, p = 0.30, ƞ²_p = 0.01). Furthermore, we found a significant interaction between circadian typology and perfectionistic concerns on BWAS score (F_4,353 = 2.64, p < 0.05, ƞ²_p = 0.03). The Bonferroni post-hoc test showed that neither-types with high levels of perfectionistic concerns reflected the highest scores on workaholism scale (3.18 ± 0.10) compared to morning-types (2.60 ± 0.18, p < 0.05) and evening-types with high levels of perfectionistic concerns (2.93 ± 0.29, p = 1). For the moderation analysis, working hours were significantly related to workaholism (B = 0.01, LLCI = 0.01, ULCI = 0.02), while the interaction among circadian typology and perfectionistic concerns to workaholism was close to significant (B = −0.01, LLCI = −0.02, ULCI = 0.00, p = 0.06).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.