The role of dichotomous thinking and rigidity in perfectionism
Section snippets
Participants
The sample consisted of 252 individuals. There were 40 clinical participants (72% females) recruited from the postgraduate Psychology training clinic at Curtin University. There were 111 athletes (66% males) from the sport of triathlon and 101 undergraduate university students (76% females). Age was higher in the athlete (, ) and clinical groups (, ) compared to students (, ). Inclusion criteria for athletes was competition in one or more triathlon races in
The Positive and Negative Perfectionism Scale (PANPS; Terry-Short et al., 1995)
The PANPS is a 40 item self-report scale that was used to measure positive and negative perfectionism. Items were derived from a range of scales including eating disorder scales (EDI; Garner et al., 1983; SCANS; Slade and Dewey, 1986), the Burns Perfectionism Scale (BPS; Burns, 1980), the MPS-H (Hewitt and Flett, 1991) and the Neurotic Perfectionism Questionnaire (NPQ; Mitzman et al., 1994). The scale has a factor solution comprised of two factors; positive and negative perfectionism (Haase et
Comparison of positive and negative perfectionism between groups
The mean scores on each of the measures can be seen in Table 1. In regards to group differences, it was found that age was a significant predictor of positive perfectionism, , F change , , with younger age being related to higher positive perfectionism, , . Contrary to prediction, there were no differences between groups on positive perfectionism, , F change , . Investigation of negative perfectionism indicated that
Comparison of positive and negative perfectionism between groups
Our predictions regarding levels of negative perfectionism between the three groups were supported. Specifically, the clinical group had the highest level of negative perfectionism whereas the athlete group had the lowest. These results are consistent with the findings of Terry-Short et al. (1995). Our prediction that differences between the groups would exist in levels of positive perfectionism was not supported. This is an interesting finding that seems to suggest that psychological distress
Acknowledgement
We thank Dr. Nicholas Barrett for providing statistical advice.
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