engleski

Is there something positive about perfectionism?

Frost et al. (1993) were one of the fi rst authors who empirically showed the existence of two fundamental dimensions of perfectionism, one of which contains positive and other which contains negative characteristics.  e authors found two higher order factors of perfectionism.  e maladaptive factor of perfectionism was positively related to negative a ect and depression, and unrelated to positive a ect. On the other hand, adaptive perfectionism was signi cantly associated only with positive a ect and unrelated to negative a ect and depression. Positive perfectionists are usually described as people who set high but realistic and achievable goals which are adjusted to the situation. Since their sense of self-worth does not depend on the task outcome, positive perfectionists are relaxed, but careful in their performance, they focus on proper task completion, and usually perform the task on time. A er reaching the goal, people with high level of positive perfectionism feel satisfaction, while failure is associated with disappointment and further eff orts (Enns and Cox, 2002). However, despite the empirical evidence, some theorists and researchers still doubt the existence of normal, adaptive, or positive aspects of perfectionism (e.g. Greenspon, 2001, 2008, Flett and Hewitt, 2002, 2005, Benson, 2003). For example, Flett and Hewitt (2006) stated that perfectionism should be perceived exclusively as pathological form of behavior and they emphasize that even positive perfectionism has a maladaptive side. According to all mentioned, the aim of this paper was to further investigate positive aspects of perfectionism. To achieve this goal, we conducted three studies on diff erent samples of Croatian high-school and university students. In those studies we examined the relation between positive perfectionism (Slade i Owens, 1998) and self-esteem, students’ satisfaction with their academic achievement, self-discrepancies, self-handicapping, anxiety and depression. Results have shown that positive perfectionism is positively correlated with self-esteem, negatively with real-ideal and real-ought discrepancy, depression symptoms (N=200 students) and also with self-handicapping (N=337 students). Th ere was no correlation with anxiety (N=647) and students’ satisfaction with their academic achievement (N=200 students). Due to the moderate positive relationship between positive perfectionism and self-esteem and its negative correlation with maladaptive aspects of self-image, experiences and behaviors, we can conclude that positive perfectionism has adaptive aspects that should be encouraged and developed among young people.

Positive perfectionism; self-esteem; psychological health

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