Perfectionism in anorexia nervosa: novel performance based evidence

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Clinical Psychology
• Psychopathology

Background:

• Research on perfectionism in Anorexia Nervosa (AN) has primarily used self-report measures, limiting objective assessment.
• Behavioral evidence for perfectionism in AN remains underexplored, necessitating alternative measurement approaches.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate behavioral evidence of elevated perfectionism in individuals diagnosed with Anorexia Nervosa (AN) using novel performance-based tasks.
• To compare performance-based perfectionism between AN patients and healthy controls (HCs).

Main Methods:

• 153 participants (81 with AN, 72 HCs) completed two performance-based tasks (text replication, bead sorting) assessing perfectionism.
• Self-report measures of perfectionism were also administered to all participants.
• Statistical analyses compared performance and self-report data between the AN and HC groups.

Main Results:

• The AN group demonstrated significantly higher quality text copies and took longer on the text replication task compared to HCs.
• A trend indicated more AN participants checked their work on the bead sorting task, and they spent significantly longer checking than HCs.
• Only the quality of text copies predicted self-reported perfectionism scores, suggesting performance-based measures capture distinct aspects of perfectionism.

Conclusions:

• This study provides empirical evidence of elevated performance-based perfectionism in individuals with Anorexia Nervosa.
• Performance-based measures offer valuable insights into the behavioral manifestations of perfectionism in AN, complementing self-report data.
• Findings highlight the importance of objective assessments in understanding the complex nature of perfectionism in eating disorders.