Relationships between two dimensions of employee perfectionism, postwork cognitive processing, and work day functioning

ABSTRACT

This daily diary study examined relations between two distinct perfectionism dimensions and work-related cognitions experienced by employees during evening leisure time. Drawing from perseverative cognitive processing theory, we hypothesized that perfectionistic concerns would be related to work-related worry and rumination during post-work evenings. In contrast, we hypothesized that a theoretically more adaptive perfectionist dimension (perfectionistic strivings) would be associated with positively valenced self-reflections about work across consecutive evenings. A sample of 148 full-time workers completed an initial survey, which included a trait perfectionism measure, reported their work-related cognitions across four consecutive evenings of a working week, rated their sleep quality immediately upon awakening on each subsequent morning, and their daily levels of emotional exhaustion and work engagement at the end of each work day. Results showed that perfectionistic concerns were indirectly negatively associated with sleep quality and work day functioning via the tendency to worry and ruminate about work. In contrast, perfectionistic strivings were indirectly positively associated with work day engagement via the propensity to experience positive thoughts about work during evening leisure time. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Perfectionism
• perseverative cognition
• sleep
• burnout
• engagement

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. MSEM provides the most reliable estimate of each participant’s average across time for the constructs collected at the day-level. In MSEM, the higher level (i.e., person-level) parts of these constructs are represented as latent variables estimated using shared within-participant variance, as opposed to using person mean scores (see Preacher et al., 2010).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) under grant reference: RES-061-25-0232.