Facets of self-oriented and socially prescribed perfectionism and feelings of pride, shame, and guilt following success and failure

Perfectionism purportedly bestows vulnerability to distress via an interaction with achievement and interpersonal stress. We test this by assessing athletes’ perfectionism and subsequent self-conscious emotion following repeated competitive failure. Sixty college athletes undertook three 4-minute competitive sprint trials on a cycle ergometer and were instructed that they had performed the worst of all competitors on each occasion. Measures of perfectionism (self-oriented and socially prescribed) were taken at baseline and measures of pride, guilt, and shame were taken at baseline and three times following each successive failure. Across the successive failures, self-oriented perfectionism predicted within-person trajectories of decreasing pride and increasing guilt. Socially prescribed perfectionism predicted within-person trajectories of increasing shame and guilt. Furthermore, a combination of high self-oriented and high socially prescribed perfectionism predicted the steepest within-person increases in shame and guilt. Findings support an achievement specific vulnerability hypothesis whereby those higher in perfectionism experience pronounced distress following competitive failure.

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The Role of Perfectionism and Autobiographical Memory in a Sample of Parasuicide Patients

Crisis ◽

10.1027/0227-5910.29.2.64 ◽

2008 ◽

Vol 29 (2) ◽

pp. 64-72 ◽

Cited By ~ 22

Author(s):

Susan A. Rasmussen ◽

Rory C. O’Connor ◽

Dallas Brodie

Keyword(s):

Suicidal Ideation ◽

Autobiographical Memory ◽

Memory Task ◽

Self Report ◽

Hierarchical Regression ◽

Overgeneral Autobiographical Memory ◽

Socially Prescribed Perfectionism ◽

Hopelessness Depression ◽

Self Harm ◽

First Time

The main objective of this study was to investigate the relationship between social perfectionism, overgeneral autobiographical memory recall, and psychological distress (hopelessness, depression/anxiety, and suicidal ideation) in a sample of parasuicide patients. Forty patients who had been admitted to a Scottish hospital following an episode of deliberate self-harm participated in the study. The participants completed the autobiographical memory task and a battery of self-report measures (multidimensional perfectionism, hopelessness, depression/anxiety, and suicidal ideation). The results showed that repetitive self-harmers were more overgeneral in their recall of positive autobiographical memories than were first-time self-harmers. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that socially prescribed perfectionism interacted with overgeneral recall of both positive and negative memories to predict suicidal ideation/depression. The findings are discussed in relation to previous research.

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