The Assessment of Self-Oriented and Socially Prescribed Perfectionism: Subscales Make a Difference

Abstract

Campbell and Di Paula (2002) suggested differentiating Perfectionistic Striving and Importance of Being Perfect subscales when measuring self-oriented perfectionism and Others’ High Standards and Conditional Acceptance subscales when measuring socially prescribed perfectionism. In this study, we investigated the utility of this differentiation by analyzing data from 1,041 students and examining correlations with positive striving and maladaptive evaluation concerns aspects of perfectionism and with positive and negative indicators of well-being and psychological adjustment. As expected, (a) Perfectionistic Striving scores showed higher correlations with positive striving aspects of perfectionism and with positive indicators of well-being and adjustment than Importance of Being Perfect scores, and (b) Conditional Acceptance scores showed higher correlations with maladaptive evaluation concerns aspects of perfectionism and with negative indicators of well-being and adjustment than Others’ High Standards scores. The findings indicate that Campbell and Di Paula's differentiation provides for a more detailed and informative assessment of multidimensional perfectionism and its different aspects. Moreover, it provides for new insights into self-oriented and socially prescribed perfectionism and their relationships and associations.

Acknowledgment

We thank Kathleen Otto for helpful comments and suggestions on an earlier version of this article.

Notes

¹The model proposes a third form of perfectionism, other-oriented perfectionism, which captures having excessively high standards and expectations for others. Because other-oriented perfectionism is not regarded to be a core dimension of multidimensional perfectionism (e.g., Enns & Cox, 2002; Stoeber & Otto, 2006), and Campbell and Di Paula (2002) did not suggest subscales for this dimension, it was disregarded in this study.

²Information about which items form the subscales was obtained from N. W. Van Yperen (personal communication, October 16, 2006) and confirmed by A. Di Paula (personal communication, October 15, 2008). Because the MPS items are protected by copyright, only item numbers are reported. Please see Hewitt and Flett (2004) for the full items.

³The correlation r _alerting-CV is the Pearson correlation r between the Z_r transformed correlations with the MPS scales (see Westen & Rosenthal, 2003, for details).