A critical examination of the construct of perfectionism and its relationship to mental health in Asian and African Americans using a cross-cultural framework

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Abstract

Although the bulk of the research literature on the construct of perfectionism and its relationship to mental health in the last 20 years has focused predominantly on Caucasian American samples, researchers are paying increasing attention to understanding perfectionism's dimensions across ethnicities. Given this momentum, the purpose of this paper is to use a cross-cultural framework to review published studies assessing perfectionism in members of an ethnic minority group living in the United States. Research to date has focused exclusively on Asian and African American samples and we organize our review by separating this literature into those studies that use level and structure-oriented cross-cultural approaches. Structure-oriented approaches empirically explore the phenomenology and/or correlates of perfectionism within each ethnic group whereas level-oriented approaches examine the relative magnitude of perfectionism's levels across groups. The last section of the review critically examines the strength of the evidence in support of researchers’ arguments that certain sociocultural factors, such as collectivism and parenting style, influence perfectionism's expression and implications for ethnic minorities. Throughout the review, we offer a series of steps researchers can take to foster our understanding of perfectionism and its impacts using a cross-cultural perspective.

Highlights

► Reviews studies assessing perfectionism in ethnic minority groups. ► Finds tentative support for factorial invariance of perfectionism measures. ► Findings on correlates of perfectionism parallels results from broader literature. ► Observes differences in levels of perfectionism across ethnic groups. ► Discusses how sociocultural factors may account for ethnic differences.

Section snippets

Conceptualization and measurement of perfectionism

In order to ground this review in the latest theory on the phenomenology of perfectionism, we begin with a description of its current conceptualization and measurement. Extant research on perfectionism often defines it as a long-standing cognitive style or personality trait that develops in childhood (cf. Flett et al., 2002). In the last two decades, measures designed to capture perfectionism have proliferated. This review focuses on the questionnaires utilized by empirical studies of

A structure-oriented analysis of perfectionism's dimensions

One set of structure-oriented approaches to investigating the construct equivalence of perfectionism's measurement across ethnicities is to examine whether there are similarities in the ways in which perfectionism subscale items load onto broader factors as well as how identified perfectionism factors relate to one another. This involves testing whether the structure of existing perfectionism measures is invariant across ethnic groups, an important first step in establishing the validity of a

Structure-oriented studies examining the predictive relationship of perfectionism's dimensions to important outcomes

Another structure-oriented approach to examining perfectionism is to examine whether its dimensions show similar relationships to important outcome variables across ethnic groups. The assumption behind this type of analysis is that certain aspects of culture may impact the way in which perfectionism correlates with psychological outcomes within each ethnic group. ⁎Yoon and Lau (2008) described two competing models for understanding culture's impact on the relationship between perfectionism and

Level-oriented studies exploring perfectionism's dimensions across ethnicities

In contrast to structure-oriented cross-cultural approaches, level-oriented studies conduct comparative analyses of perfectionism levels across ethnicities. There is some reason to expect that personality traits like perfectionism might differ in magnitude across ethnic groups since cultural context shapes notions of “ideal” personality traits; these ideals are typically reflected in the socialization practices within each culture. For example, Weisz, Weiss, Suwanlert, and Chaiyasit's (2006)

What about ethnicity accounts for differences in perfectionism?

As previously noted, even research that strives to bring attention to the impact of ethnicity on the construct of perfectionism rarely tests specific mechanisms that shed light on how they exert their influence. Fortunately, a few researchers have focused recently on explicating empirically whether and how cultural variables might influence the phenomenology and correlates of perfectionism across ethnicities (cf. ⁎Yoon & Lau, 2008), although most work in this area still focuses on post hoc

Looking forward

The purpose in this review has been to acquire a clearer picture of how perfectionism might develop, function, and express itself in ethnic minorities using a cross-cultural approach. In trying to tie together the findings of the review, it is important to keep in mind one of the “fundamental paradoxes of cultural psychology” (p. 210; Cohen, 2007). That is, one of the central critiques levied against mainstream psychology is its tendency to make broad generalizations based on limited sampling.

Acknowledgments

The first author was supported by a Pilot Research Award from an Extramural Associate Research Development Award funded by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, Grant 5G11HD043544 during the writing of this manuscript. Thanks to Nnamdi Pole for his helpful comments on an earlier draft.

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    1

    Present address: Department of Educational and Psychological Studies, School of Education, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL 33124, USA.

    2

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