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Article Excerpt
The Feelings, Reactions, and Beliefs Survey (FRBS) was administered to 141 undergraduate students to evaluate differences in Rogerian personality constructs among adaptive, maladaptive, and nonperfectionists. The groups differed significantly on 5 FRBS subscales: Fully Functioning Person, Struggling With Feelings of Inferiority, Openness to Feelings in Relationships, Feeling Ambivalent in Relationships, and Focusing Conscious Attention.
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Perfectionism has gained popularity among researchers and authors in the professional literature in recent years. Some of these authors have developed a conceptualization of perfectionism that includes potentially adaptive as well as maladaptive dimensions. For instance, Hamachek (1978) conceived of both normal and neurotic perfectionists. He described neurotic perfectionists as seldom satisfied with their performance, typically believing that they could have done better or tried harder. These individuals are rarely able to achieve self-satisfaction despite favorable outcomes. Normal perfectionists, in contrast, tend to derive pleasure from their efforts and satisfaction from their accomplishments. They set high standards for themselves, but they allow for greater flexibility in their performance on the basis of the demands of the task at hand.
More recent research (e.g., Frost, Heimberg, Holt, Mattia, & Neubauer, 1993; Rice, Ashby, & Slaney, 1998; Slaney, Ashby, & Trippi, 1995) supports Hamachek's (1978) conceptualization of perfectionism as a multidimensional construct including both healthy and unhealthy dimensions. For instance, Slaney et al. (1995) factor analyzed the Almost Perfect Scale (APS; Slaney & Johnson, 1992) and two scales both called the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (MPS; Frost, Marten, Lahart, & Rosenblate, 1990; Hewitt & Flett, 1991). The APS was specifically designed to measure both healthy and unhealthy perfectionism, whereas both MPS scales focused primarily on the more negative aspects of perfectionism. The authors' analysis yielded two factors--a positive striving factor and a negative evaluation concerns factor--that they labeled adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism. Perfectionists, both adaptive and maladaptive, hold similar very high standards for their personal performance. However, whereas adaptive perfectionists report little distress due to rely discrepancy between the standards they endorse and their own evaluation of their performance, maladaptive perfectionists acutely perceive any discrepancy between standards and performance and evaluate themselves negatively as a result. Slaney et al. (1995) demonstrated a significant positive association between adaptive perfectionism and self-esteem and found no relationship between adaptive perfectionism and depression. Conversely, they found a significant positive relationship between depression and maladaptive perfectionism, which had a significant inverse relationship with self-esteem. Rice et al. (1998) examined Frost et al.'s (1990) MPS and a revised version of the APS, the Almost Perfect Scale-Revised (A PSR; Slaney, Rice, Mobley, Trippi, & Ashby, 2001), in a confirmatory factor analysis. Results again supported a two-factor model of adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism. In their subsequent analysis, the authors found support for a model directly and indirectly (through self-esteem) linking maladaptive perfectionism with depression. They found no support for a link between adaptive perfectionism and depression.
Research using either the APS or the APSR to identify groups of adaptive and maladaptive perfectionists and nonperfectionists has consistently revealed significant differences among these groups. For instance, Ashby and Kottman (1996) demonstrated that maladaptive perfectionists harbored greater feelings of inferiority than did adaptive perfectionists. LoCicero and Ashby (2000) found that adaptive perfectionists had higher scores on measures of general self-efficacy and social self-efficacy than did both maladaptive perfectionists and nonperfectionists. In addition, Periasamy and Ashby (2002) found that both adaptive and maladaptive perfectionists attained higher scores than nonperfectionists on a measure of internal locus of control, potentially reflecting the similar very high standards for personal performance endorsed by each group; however, maladaptive perfectionists also scored higher titan either adaptive perfectionists or nonperfectionists on a measure of external locus of control by powerful others, which may reflect a less-than-healthy need for approval.
A number of theoretical explanations have been offered for the distinction between normal (adaptive) and neurotic (maladaptive) perfectionism. Proceeding from a psydlodynamic perspective, Arkowitz (1990) suggested that maladaptive perfectionism is "woven in a developmental matrix of unresolved grandiosity, an unrealistic ego-ideal, and harsh superego structures" (p. 54). Similarly, Sorotzkin (1985) noted, "perfectionism in narcissism is viewed as an attempt to avoid shame and humiliation for not living up to an archaic grandiose view of self" (p. 564). From a cognitive-behavioral perspective, Ellis (2002) conceptualized the distinction between adaptive and maladaptive perfectionism as the contrast between "rational preferring and irrational demanding" (pp. 220-221) that a person meet high standards of performance. Burns (1980) noted a number of cognitive distortions endemic to the maladaptive perfectionist, including "all or nothing thinking," which is revealed when their performance "falls short of perfect, [and...
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